TMNT: Strike of the Dragon
by Ravyne and Katt B
Summary: (SEQUEL TO: Rise of the Dragon!) Home had been just the break she needed; just the time she required to find herself again. Living with a desire for revenge for so long and then having it suddenly taken away from you can take a toll on a person. But how does one go about rediscovering themselves again? Maybe a little walk through the woods can provide some answers. (COMPLETED!)
1. Prologue

**Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **Part 2**

* * *

 **Prologue:**

Time had never been her friend. She was never the strongest in her class or the quickest, but she had worked her butt off to get here. She just wished she had had more time. More time to train, more time to study, more time to grow.

Then, when it was time for her trial, she would be positive that she would pass it, that she would survive it, and then be even stronger afterwards when it was over.

But now, standing on the edge of the cliff looking out over the snowcapped mountains, waiting for the Dragons to call her in, she wasn't sure she'd make it.

She only wished she had more time.

"Ryu?"

She jumped at the voice speaking her adopted name, spinning on the snowy rocks, feeling awkward on the unstable surface. These mountains had never liked her. They were too hard, too cold, too unfeeling. Earth wasn't her friend, it was her enemy. Why couldn't the Sanctuary be located in a city like Tokyo or New York? Somewhere she was familiar with?

The woman standing in the door way had long white-blonde hair braided over one shoulder to her waist, a single flash of darker brown streaking through her bangs. Her cold eyes were pale blue like ice, but Ryu had come to know these stony eyes as her only family—her guardians.

The Dragon held out her hand to Ryu and the smaller girl took an unsteady breath. "It's alright, child," the Dragon assured her with a small smile, "You will survive. You are strong."

Ryu took her hand and together they walked through the doors. Her palms were sweating and Ryu knew the woman could tell.

The Dragon spoke comfortingly to her as they continue down the cave lit by a string of strange blue globes, "Twelve years old is a very trying time in any child's life, but you must keep your mind focused on your task. Do you understand, Ryu?"

"Y-Yes, ma'am," she stuttered.

They exited out into a bigger cavern, a long table set up with a white, silk tablecloth thrown over it. Five other Dragons were here too, scurrying around gracefully but in no hurry. She was helped up onto the table that was too tall for her to climb up on and instructed to lie down. Her heart started hammering in her chest, sweat building on her brow, her stomach twisted into knots; she suddenly just wanted more time.

"Relax, little Ryu," came a familiar voice. The man stopped beside her with a smile. A smile she knew. This was the man who had rescued her, brought her to the Sanctuary to train. He's the one who had held her why she had cried in front of the blazes that consumed her family.

She suddenly wasn't scared anymore. Ryu smiled back.

"I won't be able to call you little Ryu after this, will I?" he smiled.

Ryu shakes her head, "Nope. If I survive."

"You will," his smile vanished, "You are strong."

He held out a small vial to her and she sat up to swallow the gulp of shimmering blue liquid. It burned like cold fire down her throat as she sat back to wait. At first nothing had happened, then again she didn't know what to expect, but then there was nothing but pain. Pain like nothing she had ever felt before in her life.

All she had wanted was more time.

There was no way she was going to survive this—not pain like this. It was impossible! It ate at her, inside and out. Swallowing her alive in its frozen fire.

Then there was something that came to her, soft at first but then quickly wrapping her up in a snug embrace.

A song, a voice from deep below her, far beneath the frozen earth. Soft, warm, gentle.

A friend…


	2. Chapter 1: 3-1 Within The Woods

_Author's Note:_

 _Hey, everyone! Long time no see! We are glad to be back with the next installment of our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series and are going crazy working on the third installment...hint hint! Katt B. wanted to post the chapters up herself but sadly she is on vacation this week and told me that she wouldn't be able to post them herself. So to make up for the long wait we made you all pull through, she has asked me to upload the first three chapters as an apology._

 _Please enjoy and let us know what you think!_

 _-Ravyne_

 _*DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT!*_

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **1**

 **3-1: "Within the Woods"**

The hooded figure lands and ducks close to the ground, grass clean up to her knees, in the small clearing. Two other hooded figures land behind her, one male and the other female about her height. They all stay close to the dirt as the black helicopter above them loudly pulls away higher into the air, the propellers chopping through the evening noisily, and disappears over the trees.

As it goes, the first hooded figure stands up and goes to the top of the hill, staring out at the darkening sky line of the city beyond. Behind her, the male figure steps up beside her and grabs her shoulder.

"Ready to go?" he asks.

The girl behind them is busy typing away on a small device, ignoring them both for a moment as she reads something on the screen, "Sensors are showing some heavy activity there still. It's been a while since the invasion, but there's still unrest in a couple of hot spots."

The hooded female at the top of the hill smiles a bit, the slightest hint pulling at the corner of her mouth, "Well, we'll just have to avoid the hotspots then, won't we?"

"Idiot," the other girl snarls, "We shouldn't even be going in there in the first place. It's suicide without back up."

"You two are the back up," the first girl responds just as sharply, nodding her head at the silhouette of the city across the water, "I have to make sure."

"Then let's go before you two go at each other again and I get stuck cleaning it up," the guy groans.

Both of the girls glance at each other before turning back towards the city line, blazing against the setting sun. Why wouldn't they go in the first place? Both of them like a little bit of a challenge.

* * *

"Ugh, they actually live down here?" the taller girl whines, pulling her gas mask farther up her nose in a failed attempt to rid herself of the fumes coming off the sewer water. The slightly shorter girl in front of their group shushes her as they silently creep through the eerily quiet tunnels below the city. The streets above had been overrun by mutated humans and trees while Kraang bots of all levels patrolled mercilessly on every corner. It was impossible to move about without being seen, so they quickly ducked down the nearest man-hole to avoid the sentries.

Personally, none of them had expected the invasion to leave things this bad. Then again they hadn't been able to get here right when it happened to help so things must've accelerated in their absence.

"Gaa, this is so unsanitary!" the taller girl hisses again, kicking something unmentionable off her boot, sloshing water loudly against the stone.

The girl at the front and her male companion both shush her again as something up ahead of them moves. They all duck against the wall, letting the shadows hide them from view and they wait it out. Whatever it is finally moves off and they glance around the corner, their hoods falling farther over their faces.

A Kraang bot moves out of view.

"They're down here too?" the taller girl groans.

"Do you ever stop complaining? We've been through worse."

The guy pinches them both on their arms, cutting off their argument as he moves forward again down a different tunnel to elude the Kraang bot entirely. Both girls glare at each other before following after him. Soon they find themselves in a subway tunnel, abandoned long ago by…anyone.

The male figure raises a knife from inside his long black coat and hurls it through the air, splitting open the heads of two Kraang that patrol outside a large entrance lined with turnstiles.

The smaller girl takes off quickly, nearly leaving her companions behind, to leap over the dead machines and jog into the room beyond.

It's all destroyed, the spiral ramp from above fallen from the roof, game machines hurled around from an obvious struggle. The smaller girl stops cold, shifting her gaze around the empty, dust filled, deserted lair. The male comes up behind her and grabs her arm, shaking her from her thoughts.

She throws herself mentally out of her mental shambles and glances over at him.

"Don't get overwhelmed. Focus on what needs to be done," he tells her.

The girl nods and throws back her hood. Silver-white hair falls free over her left shoulder in long smooth strands held by a simple red band. Her bangs fall over her pale blue, blind, left eye as her amber right eye takes in what is left of what had once been her home.

"You know what to do," Ryu tells them, her face determined, "Search the place for any signs of them. I want to know if they're alive."

"And if they're not?" the other hooded girl asks dully.

The guy throws a glare at her, shutting her up.

They all split up to search the place, Ryu taking the back rooms where the turtles had slept and finding them all empty. She'd never seen their rooms before and she would love to take the opportunity to be nosy but being in the underground belly of a city that's been invaded by aliens… It's just not the time right now.

As she heads for the lab, the other girl comes out of the kitchen and crosses the room to meet her, "They must've been keeping some kind of animal in that freezer of theirs 'cause there're claw marks all along the inside of it."

"Was there anything in it?" Ryu asks, stopping suddenly to face her.

The girl tosses her arms up in disbelief, "Besides normal stuff you'd keep in a freezer? Uh, no. Why would anyone in their right mind put an animal in a freezer? That's cruel."

"No that's ice cream kitty."

"Wha-?"

"Nevermind," Ryu cuts her off, rubbing her chin in thought. "Either ice cream kitty got out or they took her with them."

"You think they left?"

"There's a high chance they did; the cat has to stay cold. This place was obviously attacked by the Kraang, though I'm not sure how they found them, so they would've run to a safe house or second base somewhere," Ryu says.

"Which is…where exactly?" the other girl asks impatiently.

She pauses for a second, dropping her eyes in defeat, "I don't know."

The other girl groans, kicking the door open to the lab with her foot carelessly, "I thought you knew these people?!"

"Keep your voice down!" the male hisses at her, meeting them at the empty lab. "I didn't find anything in that other room, but it's a mess. The tree is toppled over and the leaves are dying off. It won't last very long."

Ryu hangs her head sadly. If only she'd been here, none of this would've happened. She could've stopped this…

"Hey, what's this stuff?"

She looks up across the room as the other girl is nosily throwing stuff around on the tables. She's holding up a canister of familiar green goo and Ryu hisses in alarm, rushing towards her, "Put it down!"

"Why?" the other girl asks as Ryu snatches it from her and shoves it into the metal cabinet that acted as the storage for the other chemicals and lab equipment needed for any experiments that happened to be going on.

As she closes the door, she hesitates a few seconds, spotting the few places on the shelves that are empty. Ryu swings her eyes to the table against the wall beside it and notices the first aid box is missing too.

"They definitely ran," she points at the spot where the box used to sit, "He took his first aid kit."

"Maybe the Kraang took it," the other girl groans, "You did say that one of these people was uber smart right? Maybe these aliens found something in it they liked and just took it."

"I really wish you'd stop being so negative," Ryu glares at her.

"That wasn't negative. Negative would be me continuously telling you that you're wrong about them being alive and that they were all killed off by the aliens or experimented on and turned into monsters."

Ryu is about to hit her but the guy with them pulls her up by her waist and drops her a few feet away by a work table, "Cool it. Both of you need to stop getting side tracked and keep looking. If they ran, we need to find out where."

Ryu stares down at the table he'd dropped her by. A familiar piece of metal stares back up at her and she smiles. "I think I can figure out where they are," she says, lifting the head of their once former robot comrade. Looking to the right of it, she reaches down to flip open an old folder to find out what's inside. It's just what she wants to find: blueprints.

"How?" the guy asks as he and the other girl come to her sides to stare down at the blueprints with her.

"By reviving an old friend," she responds as she sets the head down and pulls off the bag from her back, "With my own personal tweaks, of course."

"We're going to be here for a while, aren't we?" the other girl whines.

"Possibly," the guy grins.

The other girl pulls off her gas mask, stuffing it into the pocket of her long black coat, and groans loudly in frustration, "Wake me up when we have a plan please!"

Ryu sits down on top of the table, pulling out the welder left behind on the other side of the lab, and slips on the welding mask collecting dust on top of the tool kit. She tosses a smile over to the girl by the wall who's glaring at her, "I always got a plan. It's called adapting."

"Well, when you're done 'adapting', can we please go hotwire a car and get out of this ground zero city?"

"Sure, but we've got to make a quick stop on the way," Ryu shoots back.

"Where?" the other girl asks, raising an eyebrow in question.

Grinning, she nods her head, flipping the mask down over her face, and lights the welder with a sharp snap. It flares to life and she gets to work.

* * *

The van stops the second it pulls onto the dirt driveway and they all stare out the front windshield at the distant farm house across the clearing.

"You've got to be kidding me," the girl growls, glaring through her sunglasses. "Are you sure that tin can's right?"

Ryu leans over the front seat to get a good look at the house, glancing once down at the ipad-sized screen in her hands. The screen is transparent except for the blue and green map images glowing across it. When she looks back up at the house, she nods, "That's what Metalhead's showing me and my tech's never wrong."

"Check it again. I think it is."

"You always think it is," Ryu glares at her.

"Would you two stop?" the guy moans from the passenger seat. "You've been going at it since we left the city."

"Well then you shouldn't have invited her," Ryu answers with a sarcastic grin as she drops back into her own seat to continue poking around on the small screen.

"The Dragons told her to come. I'm not going to argue with them."

The other girl flicks her designer sunglasses off and glares at the old farm house with dark brown eyes. Lining those eyes are the same Marks Ryu sports on her body only these decorate the corners of her eyelashes like the ancient Egyptians used to paint up their eyes. Her Marks are a few shades darker than Ryu's, having to stand out against her olive skin tone, but they still bare the same faded look that makes them appear like a part of her own skin rather than like tattoos. A few stray dots of the Marks spot around the corners of the main tatts, making them look more exotic like the marks of a leopard.

"I hate my life," she grumbles.

"Get over it. Let's move," Ryu tells her flatly.

The girl puts the van back into gear and drives the vehicle down the rest of the driveway. They park it beside the other van and hop out. Ryu walks a few steps across the yard towards the front of the house but pauses outside as her comrades go inside.

The earth stirs under her boots, singing up to her. She crouches down and threads her fingers into the grass. The song is fearful, hesitant. Her eyes lift to the large barn across the yard, the moonlight highlighting the world around her. Night had fallen a while ago, giving way to a beautiful full moon for them to drive by.

Now though, it only feels oddly eerie.

Her comrades come out of the house a moment later.

"Hey, no one's here!" the guy calls to her.

Ryu's eyes narrow, barely registering his words as she scans the dark woods farther out. They both come to her side, following her gaze.

"What's up?" the guy asks.

The other girl crosses her arms, annoyed, and replies sarcastically, "Yeah, please tell us. We're bored."

The guy smacks her head gently.

Ryu opens her mouth, parting her suddenly dry lips, "Something's wrong."

"Yay, barely got out here to the middle of nowhere and now this place is turning into one of those terribly cliché horror movies," the other girl groans, throwing her arms into the air.

"What are you grumbling about?" the guy rolls his eyes at her.

"Old creaky farm house, menacing antique barn, dark, creepy woods…need I say more? Might as well go get a Great Dane and paint the van in the 'Mystery Machine' colors. Next thing you know, an axe-wielding lunatic is going to try and scalp us all for his dinner menu."

Ryu stands up and they both stare at her as if she's crazy.

"What?" the girl asks seriously, "Too dark?"

"You've got issues," Ryu shakes her head.

"Thanks," the girl smirks at her mockingly.

A scream pierces the night and they all start. Ryu stares off above the trees as birds scatter in terror further off into the woods. "That was April," she realizes.

"Who?" the guy and girl ask in union.

"Come on," Ryu punches her fist into the ground and the earth rips up with a loud, thunderous _crack_! Her comrades leap up onto the floating mound and she lifts it higher into the air until they're flying over the trees. Her eyes scan down into the dark woods below her frantically, searching for anything that moves. Besides the birds they scare loose from the tree tops below them, nothing else stirs.

A break in the trees allows the moonlight to filter down below it and Ryu uses that time to really strain her eyes for something familiar.

"There!"

She jerks around as the other girl points off below them on the other side of the earth mound. Ryu goes to her side quickly and looks over the edge. An old shack stands there silently until something tears out of the door and a flash of yellow zips through the trees.

"That's April," Ryu says, crouching down to place her hand on the center of the mound she's lifted from the earth. The mound responds, sinking through the air until they're closer to the tree tops. "I've got to aim this right."

"Aim?" the guy asks.

"Yeah, I can't drop this down into the trees and fly around 'cause I'm not that good, but I can drop it on a target if I time it right."

"Well, you might want to make this thing a little bigger because from what I can see from here, whatever is following her is _waaaay_ bigger than your little block of dirt," the other girl points out.

"Negative," Ryu grumbles under her breath, "Keep me posted."

"I'm watching," the guys calls from his place at the edge in front of her.

A second later, Ryu spots a taller than average tree standing directly in their line of flight. There's no way she can fly over it in time. It's either swing around it or hit it. "I've got to swerve!"

"Don't or we'll lose them," the guy argues.

"Do you not see that tree?!"

"Trust me," he calls back.

The tree gets closer and closer with every passing second. Ryu's eyes widen in panic; they're going to hit it, no doubt about it.

"Now!"

"What?!" the other girl screams.

"Now!"

Ryu obeys him and swings the front of the mound straight up, giving them a good enough leverage to jump off backwards and fall towards the trees. They use the tree limbs to slow their decent but Ryu slips on the last one and is forced to grab it with her hands in order to keep from becoming a pancake on the forest floor. A second later, her earth mound falls to the ground with a heavy _boom_ , smashing whatever was under it. They all jump to the ground and come out into the moonlight to get a better look at the damage. From under the mound, something has splattered out from the impact sight; thankfully it's not red.

"Ew, what is that?" the other girl says in disgust.

"It looks like some kind of chunky, chewed up, nasty cereal…"

Both girls throw him sickened looks and he just grins.

"Gross!" Ryu chokes.

The ground moves, the mound shifts. They all stare in horror as the dead comes back to life and rises through the top of the mound as if it's nothing. It turns on them and raises a sharp, gleaming sword in its hand. Ryu's eyes turn to the sword in a flash; that sword doesn't belong to this thing.

 _That's Leo's sword_ , she thinks, _He couldn't have taken it from Leo unless he's…_

Someone comes running up behind them but before they can turn around the other girl points at the sword and scoffs, "Ha! Axe-wielding lunatic! I win."

Ryu glares at her, "That's a sword."

"OMGA," the other girl rolls her eyes, "It's got a sharp blade and it can kill somebody. Same thing."

"Uh…no, it's not," Ryu argues.

"Seriously, you two are going to do this right now?" the guy groans. The two girls ignore him going into a heated argument as the monster finally frees itself from the mound of crushing dirt and starts stalking towards them with the sword. "Ugh, nevermind," the guy flips back his black jacket, throwing off the hood, and pulls out two lethal looking guns from holsters at his thighs.

His hair is pale blonde, pulled back into a pony-tail that reaches his shoulder blades. A small section of it is a darker brown, braided in a thin strand against the rest of it. His eyes are a cool shade of blue, like the azure waters of the Caribbean.

Someone taps Ryu's shoulder and she turns to find April, Mikey, Donnie, Casey, and Leo all staring at her in confusion. Suddenly the memories of how she left come flying back to the forefront of her mind and she's overwhelmed with guilt. She grins sheepishly and waves at them, "Hi…?"

The other girl beside her raises an eyebrow at the turtles, pulling off her sunglasses and revealing her dark brown eyes. Her jaw drops in shock, "Turtles."

Ryu's expression flips, becoming annoyed, "I told you this."

"Yeah, but…actually seeing them…its…" the other girl eyes Ryu's expression and she props her hands on her hips with a glare, "I thought you were lyin', geez."

"Mutant turtles living in the sewers under New York City studying ninjitsu under a rat master…Who could make that up?!"

"You," the other girl throws her a look.

Ryu throws her hands up, "This coming from the girl who thinks Yetis exist."

"They do exist. They're my friends."

"Now, who's sounding like the lunatic?" Ryu scoffs.

"HEY!"

"What?!" the girls scream in union, turning back around and finding their companion glaring at them.

"A little help would be nice."

"You're doing fine," Ryu tosses a hand at him, waving his worry off as if it's nothing.

The guy storms up to them, pulls the hammer back on both guns, and points a barrel at each of their heads. The girls turn to him slowly, raising their hands and smiling nervously.

"Calm down," Ryu laughs weakly, edging away around him.

"Yeah, chill," the other girl mimics.

The guy lowers his guns and smiles at the group staring on in deep confusion, "Hi, I'm Venn. Nice to meet you. You already know Ryu, I'm sure. The other girl is Venus; she's got a bit of a mouth on her so please excuse that."

"Uh…" the redhead starts, leaning around him to glance off at Ryu who throws a rock at the beast that pierces its chest and sends it flying into a tree. The other girl, Venus, starts pulling out long, sharp daggers from inside her jacket and jumps up to push them through the monster's head to better secure it there.

Venn follows her gaze and throws a thumb back at the scene, "Yeah, we know about you guys. Ryu told us, so don't worry about keeping your secret, we've got you covered."

"I was…thinking…" April trails off.

Venn studies her expression for a second and then realizes what she meant, "Oh, you mean us! Right, yeah, we're just like Ryu…sorta."

"Hey, Venn!" Ryu calls to him, "Do you mind?!"

Venn turns, aims his gun, and fires. A chain shoots out, spinning through the air dangerously, and wraps around the monster and the tree tightly in seconds. "Happy?"

"And you couldn't do that before…why?" Venus gripes. "You idiots brought me all the way out here to butt-ugly nowhere to fight a bunch of alien freaks, not mutated nuts."

Venn faces the turtles again, "Again, I do apologize for her mouth."

* * *

His eyes open up slowly through the headache pounding into his skull and he finds Donnie and April staring down at him. Donnie grins in relief and cheers, "Yes!"

Mikey pops into view and his eyes widen in horror, "Oh no! Raph! Look at him, it's terrible!"

"What do you mean? He's perfectly normal," Donnie argues.

April reaches out of view to lift up a familiar strip of red fabric and lower is down over Raph's face, tying it behind his head, "How about now, Mikey?"

Mikey leans in to get a better look and breaks into a grin, "Whew, yeah, way better."

Raph plants his hand on his younger brother's face and shoves him away angrily before sitting up off the hay bales, "What…the heck is going on?"

Casey laughs as he walks up, "A crazy swamp monster sucked out your mutagen and turned you into a plant, dude. It was awesome!"

April glares up at Casey's excitement but keeps her comment to herself as she sits down on the hay bales behind Raph. Donnie busies himself with a hand-made IV tube he's hung up nearby, "But I used this IV tube to drain all the mutagen out of the creep and back into your body. Cool, right? Killed off the infection like a bad case of shellacne."

Raph smiles over at his brother with a sigh of exhaustion, "Cool. Thanks, Don. So, what happened to the monster?"

"It got turned back into swamp goo. Pretty wicked, right?" Casey smirks, motioning with a nod of his head over towards at jar at the end of Donnie's IV that sits on a table nearby. The goop on the inside is glowing a yellow-green color that doesn't exactly scream 'pretty'.

"Donnie worked all night to save you," April points out behind him, "Leo never left your side."

Raph's eyes widen and he turns to find his brother in question sitting on a pile of hay nearby, his whole body slumped in fatigue. "That's what brothers are for," Leo smiles over at him before standing and going to bump fists with Raph, "We got to heal up, Raph. We got a city to take back."

Mikey leaps up to the top of the bale of hay that Raph had been resting on and raises a hand into the air, "I give that a big, fat, sloppy wet…BOO-YA-KA-SHA!"

"Does that kid always scream?"

They all turn to the barn doors, propped open a little ways to let in the moon light outside.

"Who was that?" Raph asks.

The others glance at each other warily, knowing full and well how Raph feels about the subject waiting outside. April folds her hands in front of her, taking a step forward, "Raph, during the fight with the monster…Ryu…found us. She's come to help us and she's brought some friends with her that I think will-."

Raph kicks over a bucket nearby as he storms off towards the door, "We don't need her or her friends! They can all go home since they like it so much!"

"Raph wait-!" Leo calls after him.

He shoves the door to the barn open and pauses. Three people stand before him in a small huddle outside. A tall guy in white blonde hair, an olive skinned girl with a half shaved head of dark brown hair, and Ryu's shorter form with her silver-white hair.

They all turn to him and Ryu's eyes widen a little before she drops her gaze to the ground guilty. Raph grinds his teeth, she should feel bad. He waltzes right up to her and swings his fist at her causing her to flinch back and lose her balance, falling to the ground before him.

"Raph, stop!"

"No," Raph yells as he jabs a finger down at Ryu with rage burning in those green eyes, "I won't stop until she's gone."

 _Huh?!_ , Ryu thinks. She stares up at him, hurt by his words and her chest tightens. Uncertain of her movements, she stays where she is on the ground and just stares up at those green eyes so full of hate.

Venn steps between him and Ryu and holds up his hands, "Let me explain-."

"No way," Raph growls, glaring around him at Ryu, refusing to even acknowledge Venn's presence, "No one wants you here anymore, so go back to that home you love so much. Don't even think about coming back!"

Leo grabs his brother and tries to pull him back but Raph breaks free and pushes past Venn. Ryu's mind snaps back to the present and she quickly stands to her feet to face him. She doesn't push him away when he starts yelling in her face, doesn't get angry when he calls her a coward for running, doesn't react when he tells her that this isn't her home anymore.

She just keeps her face blank and stares right into his eyes. She faces his anger, knowing full and well that she deserves it. Ryu keeps her mouth shut and accepts all he says to her with patience and calm. When Raph finally storms off across the dark lawn and back into the house, Ryu doesn't turn to follow him; she lets him go.

Venn stares at the ground with an odd expression on his face, digging the toe of his boot into the dirt. Venus on the other hands stares right at Ryu with an eyebrow raised in slight amusement, "Well…that was interesting."

Leo opens his mouth to say something, but April grabs his arm to stop him, "Let's all just…go get some sleep. It's late. We'll take care of this in the morning."

"Why?" Venus turns to her with her arms still crossed.

"Because things are too raw right now, Venus, stop being so inconsiderate," Venn snaps.

"I'm not being inconsiderate. Why go to bed being angry like this? We could all die tonight and they wouldn't get the chance to fix this. They'd die angry with each other and that will just fester into something that will eventually break open into full out hate."

Venn looks up at her as she spins on her heel and strolls across the yard with a little sway in her step, "I hate it when you open your mouth and a fortune cookie pops out."

Venus waves back at him without turning around, "You're welcome."

April steps up and still shakes her head, "There's only a few hours left until morning. I still think it'd be best to take care of this then."

"Yeah," Venn agrees.

"We don't have many rooms left but-."

"We'll bunk on the floor or outside. It won't bother us."

Leo pats Venn's shoulder before walking past him towards the house, "No way would we kick friends out into the yard. The living room is open."

They all head into the house and settle down for the night. As Ryu rolls her bedding out onto the floor, she tucks her arms under her head and bores her eyes into the wall in front of her. She wouldn't sleep tonight. She doesn't think her mind can shut off even if she tried.

* * *

 _Author's Note:_

 _So...? What do you think? Leave a review with your thoughts. We love to hear from you guys!_

 _-Ravyne_


	3. Chapter 2: 3-1(Part 2) Ryu

_Author's Note:_

 _Here's chapter 2! Read and enjoy! All advice and comments are welcome._

 _-Ravyne_

 _**DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT!**_

* * *

 _ **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**_

 _ **Strike of the Dragon**_

 _ **PART 2**_

* * *

 **2**

 **3-1.2: "Ryu"**

As expected, Ryu hadn't slept at all. Instead, an hour before dawn, she sits up off her bedding and pulls on her day clothes and boots in the living room before creeping silently to the kitchen. A bowl of fruit sits in the middle of the dinner table and she snatches up an apple before slipping out the front door. A morning mist fills the air around the farm, making the woods look almost nonexistent, and the sky above is just beginning to turn shades of lighter blue as the sun starts rising. Ryu takes in a deep breath of the early morning air, so crisp and fresh out here in the country that it's a bit overwhelming, and then nods as she takes off into the woods for her jog.

Unknown to her is the pair of sharp green eyes watching her from the second story window. He watches her small frame disappear into the tree line and his eyes narrow angrily. Against his will, he'd taken notice of things when he'd first seen her, like how her silver-white hair had grown longer by a few centimeters, or how her right eye had seemed almost a brighter amber than the last time he'd seen her, or how he must've grown a little because she seemed a bit shorter than he'd remembered.

Raph sighs, reaching up to rub his forehead as he crosses his arm over his chess and leans back against the wall. Why, with so much anger in his system, does he still notice her? Why, even though he wants nothing more than to forget her, does he still get flustered whenever he sees her?

He's not sure how long he stands there, but the next thing he knows Leo is shaking his shoulder with a worried look, "You okay, Raph?"

Raph turns his head to look outside. The sun has brightened the yard, chasing away the mist, and the chickens have moved out to start pecking at the ground. It must've been longer than he thought, "Yeah, yeah, I'm good. Just thinking."

"Well, come on. I want to talk to everyone."

Raph watches his brother head down the stairs, limping his way with the crutched they'd made for him, and then takes one last look out into the yard as the morning sun turns it into another world right before his eyes. With that in his mind, Raph leaps down the stairs and heads into the kitchen to take a place at the dinner table. April comes in a second later to start making breakfast with Mikey and then Donnie follows a second later with his laptop under his arm.

Leo bumps fists with Casey who comes in last and sits down too. The front door opens then and Raph shifts his form to give the doorway his profile. But it's not who he expected.

"When did you guys get up?" Leo asks with a smile as Venn and Venus step into the kitchen.

"A while ago," Venn answers going to pull a water bottle out of the refrigerator, "We were getting in some stretches outside for a bit."

Venus goes to open the freezer for something but then yelps and jumps back, "What the heck is that?!"

"Ice cream kitty!" Mikey sticks his head in the freeze and rubs noses with the strange mutant before closing it and turning to point a finger in Venus's face with a stern look, "Do not eat her."

Venus opens the freezer door again, much slower this time, and the mutant cat hisses at her, "So that's what she was talkin' about."

The front door opens again and Raph flinches against his will. "Morning!" Ryu calls as she takes off upstairs.

"Wait, Ryu!" Leo shouts after her.

"I'll be back, give me a second!" she shuts the bathroom door upstairs and they all listen as a minute later the bath turns on.

April shifts her eyes nervously and then quickly turns to go back to making eggs, "Well, at least she's in a better mood."

Donnie nods in agreement beside her as he leans against the counter. Venn and Venus share a look privately before eyeing Raph warily, both worried that today is going to be even worse than last night. Thirty seconds later, the bath turns off and they all look at the ceiling.

"Wow, she's fast," April breathes.

"We've been taught to conserve water 'cause we never got very long hot baths back home," Venn explains.

"Yeah, too many of the spoiled kids liked to waste all of it and leave none for the rest of us," Venus grins down at her water bottle sarcastically at some memory she's focused on in her mind, her hands tightening around the bottle until it starts to crush in on itself, "Rich, pig-headed, son of a-."

Venn quickly wraps his arm around her shoulders and covers her mouth, "Kids are reading this!"

When Ryu gets to the kitchen, her hair is full down, drawn up in soft, wet curls around her shoulders, and a soft cotton shirt on with a pair of jeans. Towel in hand, she leans against the doorframe leading into the kitchen and starts rubbing her hair dry, "Sorry, I smelled like sweat. I had to get that off."

Leo nods, "Alright, I'm sure we all know why I called this meeting…"

Everyone lowers their eyes to the floor, waiting for the fireworks to blow up the house.

Leo glances from Ryu's curiously oblivious stare to Raph's glowering profile and clears his throat nervously, "Well, most of us do. Anyway, I wanted to make it clear that…"

He trails off. How should he say it? 'Thanks Ryu for bringing us extra help'? Or 'We all are a team'?

He takes another breath to steady himself and tries to think like Splinter, "We're all going to be going against the same enemy here, so I think it only right that we combine our strengths and weaknesses to get the city back. I don't care how much we don't get along, we're all going to have to learn to work together. With that said-."

"Wait, what?!"

Everyone but Ryu groans under their breath, dropping their heads.

Raph stands up, outraged, and his chair is pushed back a few loud inches, "You expect us to-?!"

"Yes, Raph, I do," Leo cuts him off. "We've all got a common enemy here and I'm not going to turn away any help what so ever. Keep your anger, I don't care, but as of right now we are a team and I suggest everyone act like it. Understood?"

Raph angrily drops back into his chair, turning more towards the side door than before so that he's facing away from the group, and crosses his arms. Ryu lowers her gaze, not going to argue with Leo. Briefly she's caught off guard by how grown up he suddenly sounded, but mostly she was surprised that Raph didn't argue more than he did.

 _He must have a lot more respect for his brother,_ she thinks. _Whatever happened to Leo must've done something to all of them._

Out of nowhere, Venn's, Venus's, and Ryu's phones _ping_ at the same time with a familiar sound and they all pull them out. The screens blink with a new message. Ryu tucks hers back into her pocket and turns away from the door, "Venn you answer that. I've got to go get some stuff from the van."

"But-!" Venn tries to argue, but she's already out the front door. Lately, even since Ryu had gone to New York, he's noticed that she's become less and less mission driven. She's loosened up, smiled more. He glances at Raph's stiff form in the chair near him. How could someone like her fall for someone like him? "Go help her," he tells Venus who's started up a game of solitaire on her phone as she pops a butterscotch lollypop in her mouth.

She looks up at him as if he's gone insane and he reaches for his gun already strapped to his thigh. Venus quickly tucks her phone away and rushes out of the room.

"What is it about those guns that they hate so much?" April asks, catching the exchange.

Venn grins, pulls one out, and opens the freezer door to expose ice cream kitty to the air. The cat hisses angrily but he simply lifts his hand, palm out, and waits. Ice cream kitty sniffs his hand before purring and rubbing up against his fingers lovingly. He then sticks the barrel of his gun inside for the cat to lick before shutting the door. As he holds up the gun, the simple weapon starts changing right before their eyes. The barrel shortens, becoming almost square in his hands, and the color goes from cool gray to a white, pink, and then brown gradient of the colors across the metal.

He takes aim at a nearby glass on the table and fires.

Everyone rushes to the table to see, awe filling their faces. The glass has frosted over with ice and filled up to the top with scoop after scoop of of Neapolitan ice cream. They all turn to glance at him.

"I want a weapon like that!" Mikey whines, "I could shoot out endless supplies of pizza!"

"Trust me, it's not the greatest weapon in the world. The guns absorb the power of the thing that touches it and creates a bullet to match it, but I can only use it once; it won't absorb the same power twice. And on top of that, I only get a number of bullets depending on how strong the power is that it absorbs," Venn explains as he watches his gun shift back to normal and then slips it back into the holster on his thigh.

"What do you mean?" Donnie asks.

"I mean your ice cream cat is pretty strong because usually something that small wouldn't give these guns a single bullet. Now if it absorbed power from Venus or Ryu for example, I'd probably get two or three bullets tops."

They all glance warily at the guns on his sides and he grins.

"That's why."

After everyone eats breakfast, all except Ryu who claimed she grabbed an apple before taking her run that morning, they all head outside to the yard to train. Leo sits down on the steps when Ryu asks Venus to take a look at his leg and the olive skinned girl kneels down to do so. She lets her hands hover over his injured knee as she closes her eyes and takes deep centering breathes to concentrate.

"So what are her powers?" April asks, whispering to Ryu who stands next to her on the porch to watch Venus work.

"Well, we all have to take a lesson on energies and spiritual stuff, but Venus really got into it. She pretty much mastered it at a young age which surprised a lot of people. She's just a natural with these kinds of things. But that isn't her power," Ryu tells her.

"So she didn't go through that trial thing yet?"

"Oh, no, she did and she passed it. Her powers though are more of a defensive power instead of offensive like Venn's. It's her voice."

April throws her a confused look and Ryu chuckles.

"Let's just say that if she ever starts yelling, take cover and protect your ears."

"Wow," April gasps, "Is anyone allowed to become a student where you live?"

Ryu shrugs, "You can go and ask for a test. They'll assess your skills and decide if you've got what it takes."

"So they don't like a challenge? They only pick people they know they can train into them?"

"No, it's more of a…" Ryu trails off, rubbing her chin in thought, "It's more of an inner thing; a trait that people have. Some people just aren't meant to be protectors. Some people would use that kind of power for bad, you know."

"Oh," April nods in understanding.

After a few long minutes, Venus opens her eyes and stands up, "It's worn out and still weak, so you're doing right by staying off it."

Leo's expression falls a bit but he thanks her before hobbling off to join his brothers. April follows after him to join in on the training across the yard. Venus goes up the porch steps to stand next to Ryu and they both stare out after Leo.

"There's nothing wrong with it."

"What?" Ryu looks up at her in confusion.

Venus doesn't meet her eyes. Instead, she follows Leo with her eyes with a look of suspicion, "There's nothing wrong with his leg. All the energy points are healed and look really well. They're all telling me that the muscles are still a bit shocked, but nothing is wrong with his leg."

"Then what's wrong with it?"

Venus smacks her arm, frustrated, "There's nothing wrong with it, moron. There's something wrong with your friend. Why don't you ask him?"

She leaves Ryu on the porch, vanishing back into the house, and closes the door behind her. Ryu lifts her eyes to watch the training across the yard; Leo watches on with a smile but she can tell that there is longing to join them behind those eyes. Her expression becomes worried. If Leo's leg is fine, then…why is he still having pain?

After training, Ryu enters into the kitchen where Donnie is typing away on his laptop at the table. Chewing her lip, she debates whether she should interrupt him or not, but in the end she steps into the room and sits down in the chair beside him.

"Hey," She smiles.

"Hi," Donnie turns to her curiously.

"Um…" Ryu lowers her gaze. Just how can she say this?

"Don't worry."

She looks up in surprise.

Donnie smiles at her with that gentle smile that she's come to know so well, "I forgive you." Her eyes widen and he chuckles stiffly as he closes the lid on his computer and leans back in the chair, "Look, Ryu, I can't say that I'm happy with the way you left, but I can guess that you did it for a good reason."

She sighs, sitting back in her own chair and trails her fingers over the top of the table, tracing each grain in the old wood. "I didn't want to leave. I didn't. It's just..." she pauses for a second, choosing her words carefully, "Donnie, I've lived the last ten years of my life hunting down the killer who murdered my family, but then he just…he's just suddenly…gone. I lived my life for that one purpose and then I suddenly just didn't know what to do. I hadn't gotten my revenge; I wasn't the one to kill him. So all those years of hunting just up and crashed down on me. I was confused and lost. I needed to clear my head, to get myself back on track and to try to move on. I wasn't in my right mind and I didn't want to impose all of that on you. And on top of that, I know you all heard about what I said to Splinter in that last battle."

Ryu stops and draws her knees up to her chest with a sigh, "I just didn't know how to face him. So, yeah, Raph's right. In the end, I did run away."

Donnie listens to her and then sits silently to let it all soak in. He hadn't known about her need for revenge or about her family, so he's not sure how to tell her the truth. Splinter had warned them all that she walked a dark path, but to just now find out what it was that she was hunting for most of her life is a bit nerve racking. Especially knowing what he knows.

"Ryu, have you…gotten over your need for revenge?" Donnie asks her.

She raises her head to look at him, studying her emotions for a moment, "I…feel that I am. I feel I can move on now."

"Good…good."

"Why?"

Donnie bites his bottom lip, "Well…well, um…I'm just glad that you are. A path like that really is a bad one. Splinter would be proud of you."

Ryu catches the words the second they leave his mouth, "Would be?"

Donnie lowers his head in defeat, opening his mouth to answer, but someone else does before he can.

"Shredder beat him."

She and Donnie look up at the kitchen entrance. Raph stands there with his arms crossed and a death glare on his face. Mikey and April are behind him, heads also bowed from some heavy memory that they all share.

Ryu stands up in disbelief, "What? He couldn't have…no."

"We saw it happen, Ryu," Donnie says behind her.

Ryu turns her eyes to the floor, her thoughts swirling chaotically in her head until she feels like she's about to fall over. Splinter couldn't have lost; it's impossible! He was too strong, too skilled. Ryu slams her fist into the table, heart hammering so fast that her whole body starts to heat up under her skin, "No!"

"Ryu-."

"No, he's not gone," Ryu cuts April off as she heads past the out of the kitchen, "And I'm going to make sure of it."

"How?" Mikey calls as she storms by and tears out the front door.

"Just wait there," Ryu slams the door behind her, the action shaking the house and getting everyone's attention. They all come into the area with curious looks but all anyone can do is shrug. A few moments later, the door rips open again and Ryu returns with the ipad-sized transparent screen she'd used to map out their location before, "Sorry, Donnie, hope you don't mind, but I updated Metalhead."

"What?" all the turtles gasp.

Behind her, the very familiar little robot stomps in loudly as it looks around at everyone. When it finally spots Donnie, Metalhead raises a hand and throws him a thumbs up and a robotic voice exits its mouth, " **Hello, Donnie.** "

Donnie's jaw drops as Ryu sits at the end of the table and plugs her small handheld screen into the port on the side of Metalhead's head. "Yeah, I gave him a speech box and put in a basic scanner, but that's it. I figured you'd want to give him what you wanted him to have, so I left everything else alone. You can take the scanner out if you want."

"What kind of scanner?" Donnie asks as he takes her previous seat so that he can get a better look at the rebuilt Metalhead and everyone comes closer to join him. Venus and Venn hang back to get them something to eat from the fridge while the rest of the group gawks like fish.

"Just a minor one I designed a year ago, it's nothing fancy I can promise you that," Ryu explains as she finishes setting everything up. She turns to Metalhead and sets a determined look on her face, "Alright Metalhead, I need you to perform another scan for me."

" **Confirmed** ," the bot responds, tilting its head back to look at her with those glowing eye sockets, " **Select target area.** "

"New York City," Ryu replies.

Metalhead makes a few whirling sounds, " **Confirmed. Select target.** "

"Splinter. Alternate name: Hamato Yoshi."

Again, Metalhead whirls and clicks, " **Confirmed. Select target status.** "

"Mutant," Ryu says.

" **Confirmed. Scanning target area,** " Metalhead's eyes turn from blue to yellow suddenly and the whirls and clicks continue for a moment longer than before.

"Is he really going to find master Splinter," Mikey whispers to Leo a few steps away.

"I don't know," Leo answers.

Ryu grabs her handheld screen off the table and through the transparent screen they all watch her press a few buttons on the pad and bring up the glowing outline of a map.

Metalhead stops processing, eyes returning to normal blue, and looks up, " **Scan complete. Target found.** "

Everyone sucks in a breath in hope as Ryu continues with a bright smile breaking out across her face, "Can you do a scan for vitals please and bring it up on the screen?"

Metalhead's eyes go yellow again, " **Scanning…** "

A moment later, Ryu's handheld starts beeping, a red dot appearing the blue and green outlines of the map and everyone rushes to gather around her and Metalhead to see. She holds the screen flat so that everyone can see.

" **Scan complete,** " Metalhead confirms, looking up at her again, " **Vitals positive.** "

In response the red dot on the screen starts blinking like a heartbeat and April hugs Donnie excitedly and Mikey cheers, "He's alive!"

Leo laughs in relief. Ryu looks up and stares across from her into Raph's face; his eyes glues to the screen and his expression pained but relieved. She reaches over to take his hand and sets the screen in his hands so that he can look down at it with his brothers.

He lifts his head and their eyes meet for a moment, but it's long enough. She smiles softly at him and he drops his eyes down again. That may not have been forgiveness, but Ryu can feel some of his anger towards her lessen a small amount.

 _That's all I deserve_ , she thinks.

"Wait, can you look for anyone?" Leo asks.

Ryu blinks out of her thoughts and sits down again, "Metalhead, do another scan for me."

The robot whirls and clicks in response, " **Select target area.** "

"New York City."

" **Confirmed. Select target.** "

Ryu looks up at Leo and he leans down to speak, "Karai." He glances at Ryu and she nods before he continues, "Alternate name: Hamato Miwa."

Ryu soaks in the name, it's going on her permanent memory. The Dragons had told her who Karai really was, although she had already known from Splinter that she was his daughter. It's her real name that Ryu's never heard before until now.

" **Confirmed. Select target status.** "

"Mutant."

Ryu coughs on her breath and she looks up in alarm. They all nod at her, confirming the statement. It's Leo who explains, "She was…accidentally mutated into a snake when Shredder tried to use her as bait for us. I tried to save her but…" He sighs in defeat, "Things went bad."

Before Ryu can reply, Metalhead's voice interrupts them, " **Scan complete. Target not found.** "

April gasps in horror, "No way. We know she's still in the city. She couldn't be-."

"Repeat scan," Ryu demands.

" **Confirmed. Scanning target area…** " Metalheads eyes turn yellow again. The moments pass by agonizingly slowly, taunting them all. " **Scan complete. Target not found.** "

"Repeat scan," Ryu says again, voice becoming stern.

" **Confirmed. Scanning target area…** "

Ryu reaches out and takes the screen from Raph and zooms the map out to look over it. The scan Metalhead makes blinks over all the buildings in turn and she follows it with her eyes. Something blinks and she swears it's a dot, so she zooms in on the area. There's nothing there except the blinking dot signaling Splinter's location.

 _Don't do this to me,_ Ryu thinks, _this is going to ruin everything. Come on, Karai, where are you?_

" **Scan complete.** "

A faint dot appears a few blocks from Splinter's location and her eyes widen in hope.

" **Target found.** "

"And there she is," Ryu breathes, "Scan for vitals."

Metalhead obeys and then, " **Scan complete. Vitals unknown.** "

"Unknown?" Venn repeats.

"What the heck does that mean?" Venus gripes from her seat on the counter, chewing around a bite of sandwich.

"It means that it can't find them. That doesn't mean she doesn't have them though," Ryu explains, taking Leo's shoulder and shaking his defeated expression away, "Look at her dot. It's really faint compared to Splinter's. She's got to be too far underground for the scan to pick up. I told you it was a basic scanner. I can update it to something stronger if I need to."

"Do that," Leo says with a nod.

"I'm on it," she answers.

"Hey, do a scan for me," Venus calls over everyone's head. "Find out where Moon Grace is."

"Why don't you ask?" Ryu growls through her teeth at the girls lack of manners.

"Why don't you just do it or I will," Venus glares.

"Why don't you both shut up," Venn cuts them off. "Ryu, please can you do a scan for Moon Grace…and Haritos if you can."

Ryu throws a thumb over her shoulder out the window as she sits up quickly, "I just saw Haritos outside."

Venn pushes himself off the counter, dropping his plate on the counter, and vanishes out the door before anyone can even look up. Everyone throws her a questioning look.

"Venn's familiar," Ryu explains. "Metalhead, can you set up another scan for me?"

" **Confirmed.** "

Ryu sets the scan and they wait for the location.

" **Scan complete. Target found.** "

Venus hops down off the counter, sandwich in hand and takes the screen from Ryu with a jerk. She checks the location on the screen and smiles, "Aw. Good girl. She's staying right where I asked her to. Where'd you tell Gigi to stay? That is, if he even listens to you."

Ryu glares up at her and snatches her screen back, "Go away."

Venus smirks at her and goes to sit at the opposite end of the table just to spite her.

"Metalhead, one more scan," Ryu requests.

" **Confirmed. Select target area.** "

"New York City."

" **Confirmed. Select target.** "

"Gigi."

" **Confirmed. Select target status.** "

"Animal."

" **Confirmed. Scanning target area…** " Metalhead begins the scan and Ryu throws a mocking smile over the table at Venus. " **Scan complete. Target not found.** "

Everyone goes still, even Venus. She leans forward over the table, "You did leave him in the city, right?"

"Yeah," Ryu stares down at the screen in confusion. "Repeat scan, but change the target area to local."

" **Confirmed. Scanning target area…** " Again Metalhead goes silent for a few moments. " **Scan complete. Target not found.** "

Again everyone goes silent, glancing at each other worriedly. Ryu continues to stare at the blank screen.

"You think he left the city to avoid the invasion?" Venus asks.

Ryu's eyes widen a bit, a thought entering her head that she doesn't want. It freezes her blood and sends goosebumps across her skin. "Repeat scan," Ryu says, her voice dying in her throat, "Change target area to New York City. Change status…to…mutant."

Venus drops her sandwich and stands up, walking over to the group and pushing between April and Donnie. "Ryu…"

She ignores the girl, refusing to answer as she waits on edge for the scan to complete. Her heartrate speeds up painfully in her ears, cutting out all the sound around her.

 _Please no…please…no…don't find him…please…_ , Ryu chants to herself.

" **Scan complete,** " Metalhead confirms. " **Target found.** "

"Oh, God…" Venus chokes.

Ryu's mouth dries out, her mind going blank. Across the screen, the map returns, a red dot blinking above a familiar building that chills her skin: the TCRI building.

"Ryu…" Venus reaches out to touch her shoulder but Ryu suddenly stands up and heads for the door. It opens just as she reaches it and Venn steps through it.

"Hey, you-," Venn stops when Ryu goes right past him as if he's not even there and disappears outside. He follows her with his eyes for as long as he can see her but then spins on his toe and blurs across the short distance into the kitchen. He snares Raph by his neck and lifts him easily into the air with a growl, his pale blue eyes starting to glow slightly. "What the hell did you do?!"

Venus wraps her grip around his arm and hangs there a few centimeters off the ground, "Venn, calm down! It wasn't him!"

His glowing eye leave Raph's face and turn to her, boring his glare into her threateningly.

Venus swallows uneasily, "It's Gigi."

Venn releases Raph in an instant, Venus letting go of him, and the turtle falls to the floor coughing up a storm, "What about-?"

"He's been mutated."

"What?" He gasps, "How? He's a familiar."

"Doesn't mean anything. We don't know the full power of this alien goo. It could do anything for all we know."

Venn grinds his teeth and rubs his forehead, "I'm going after her."

"Don't."

He stops at the door and turns on her.

Venus shakes her head, "It's not that I care, but we both know how she is. She needs to get through the initial shock before you start baby-ing her." She goes to Venn's side and pats his shoulder, "Just wait, go work on your patients."

Venn sighs, glancing out the window where Ryu disappeared, and then nods in defeat.

She nudges him off towards the living room before turning her eyes out the window as well, "It's going to be a long night for all of us."

* * *

 _Author's Note:_

 _Chapter 3 is up next! Hope you guys are enjoying the story so far. Can't wait to hear from you._

-Ravyne


	4. Chapter 3: 3-2 A Foot Too Big

_Author's Note :_

 _And...chapter 3 is up! Now to let you know that Katt B. will be coming back this coming Sunday and she'll be uploading each chapter once a week on Sundays beyond that point. So look forward to her return...I'm not because she's told me she has ten more chapters for me to edit...*sigh*_

 _Anyhoo, read and enjoy! All advice and comments are welcome!_

 _-Ravyne_

 _**DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT**_

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **3**

 **3-2: "A Foot Too Big"**

"No, no, he's a Fallen."

"Like an angel…yeah, we got it…"

"No!"

Venus stands up and shoves Ryu to the side so that she can take the floor. Rolling her eyes she throws a glare at the shorter girl, "You really got to learn some better explaining techniques. What she's saying is that Venn is what we call a 'Fallen'. He _was_ a Dragon, but then he was 'killed' in a sense and dropped to…the status he is now." Venus points off at Venn's white blonde hair, a few strands of darker brown painting a short section of it braided at the nape of his neck.

On the other side of the porch, opposite of where the turtles, Casey, and April sit on the steps, Venn drops his head into his hands. Ryu leans against the banister beside him and crosses one leg over the other to tap her toe in the grass. "You two are making me sound like…some kind of freak?" he sighs.

Venus and Ryu both look up at him, "You are."

Venn flips off the banister where he sits and grabs Ryu by the hair tied off at the side of her head and pulls her across the yard.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"

Venus shakes her head and rolls her eyes, "Just so you guys know, I am not related to those idiot in any way, shape, or form."

Mikey laughs at her comment before stuffing a slice of frozen pizza into his mouth, "If you weren't related to them, then how come you know them?"

Raph smacks him on the back of the head, throwing him forward off the bottom step and face first into the grass.

"So, what makes him a Fallen then?" Leo asks, "If he's no longer a Dragon, wouldn't that just mean that he's like you and Ryu?"

"In a way, yes, only he's still got a few of the Dragon traits in his system. He may not be like the Dragon's anymore, but he's still faster, stronger, and more agile than the other followers who've gone through the trial. Also his hair is the same as theirs-white blonde, with a dark brown stripe somewhere in it," Venus explains as she stares after the guy in question at the moment. "What are you doing?" she calls across the yard to him.

Venn still holds Ryu by the hair who struggles at his side to open his hand so that she can get her hair freed, but his hand is clasped tighter than the Jaws of Life. There's no getting that fist open unless Venn wants to let go. "Waiting for you to stop yammering so we can train already," he answers.

"He's right, time to get some training in," Leo agrees as he stands up and leans on his crutch. With that, the morning takes off at a casual speed as everyone splits off to get some stretching and sparing in before the day gets too late.

Near the end of two hours, Venn goes out into the woods and comes back with four thick pieces of wood nearly as round as a baseball bat and gives two to Ryu and the other pair to Venus, "Speed test, take your stances."

The two girls face each other with a groan and spread their feet shoulder width apart, holding the sticks in their left hands down by their thighs while lifting the other to cross them in the area between them.

"Remember, this isn't about strength, it's about speed and defense. Venus you'll take lead first," he leans over and whispers something in her ear and she nods. "Ryu, just match her. Start off slow."

"I know," Ryu mumbles.

He steps back and they tap their sticks against each other once before Venus swings and Ryu quickly does the same, bringing the branches together with a loud _clack_. She swings again and again, writing out a pattern that only she knows and Ryu swings to match each move to hit her branch against the opposing one.

After a few minutes, Venn sits down on a nearby stump to watch, crossing his legs indian-style, "Next speed, Venus."

Venus responds almost immediately, her swings picking up a new pace and the loud _clacks_ repeating faster. Over on the other side of the swing between each group, April looks up from her spar with Donnie to see what they're doing. Both of them share a look of curiosity before heading over to watch. Pretty soon everyone is heading over to watch, except Raph who collapses into the swing in frustration.

"What exactly are they doing?" Leo asks Venn quietly.

"Working on defense and speed. What happens when you meet an opponent is that you have to defend yourself from their attacks but also deliver your own, correct?"

"Yeah," Leo agrees.

"Well, in this exercise, one person knows a pattern to follow but the other doesn't, meaning the person left out of the loop will have to defend while the other attacks. Every so often, they'll pick up the pace in order to keep the mind from getting too comfortable with the pace since a battle never stays one pace. So all in all, it helps train your defense, speed, and focus," Venn explains.

"But they switch it up right, so that they both get to practice?" April asks.

Venn laughs, but it sounds like he's laughing at some inside joke, "Good point. Watch this." He goes to stand behind Ryu as the girl's continue their swings, their feet rooted into the ground, and he whispers something to her. As he retakes his seat on the stump, he calls out, "Switch."

Ryu swings the opposite way out of the blue and catches Venus on the wrist, "Ow!"

Ryu bites back a grin.

"What the heck?!"

"Venn told us to switch," Ryu pushes the blame off herself with a shrug.

Venus glares at Venn who is rolling in laughter by that time, "When did you say that?!"

He looks up at April who is trying to hold back her own smile, "You see why I said focus?"

"Yeah," she smirks.

"Can I give it a shot?" Leo asks.

"Sure."

Leo walks up and Venus passes him her branches before showing him how to plant his feet and where to start off his stance, "When you start, tap your branches together once before you actually begin. It's just a thing we started, no real reason why we do it."

"Alright," Venn starts as Venus steps back from their swing range, "Ryu start off with the beginner pattern first. Let's work him up."

"Kay," Ryu nods. They both bring the branches in their left hands down by their thigh and the right ones up in front of them to cross in the area between them. "All we're going to do is criss-cross like this," Ryu explains, slowly bringing both her hands up and swinging her right arm first to her left and then doing the opposite with the left. Leo responds by blocking her with mirrored movements. "Good!" she grins, glad that he's picked it up quickly, "Alright, we'll start off slow."

They return to their starting stances and wait for Venus to begin the round. "Begin," the girl calls. Leo and Ryu start and for the next hour, everyone takes turns practicing the training until finally Raph stands up and explodes.

"Would you guys quite already?!"

They all turn to him, Ryu pausing mid-swing on Mikey's head, and throw him questioning looks. Ryu drops her eyes when his glare spins on her, unable to meet his anger anymore; for some reason whenever she sees it, she thinks of Gigi all alone in that big city with no one there to take care of him. That's how all of it started, right? She wasn't there to protect him; he's just a small lizard in a huge mess of aliens with guns and other weapons. And now look what's happened.

"Alright, Raph, you're right. Let's get some sparring in," Leo gives his brother an understanding look before turning to Mikey and Donnie, "Let's try some survival skills."

"Yeah, like how 'bout we have a turtle hunt," Raph smile evilly at his younger brothers. "Want to join, Leo?"

Ryu glances at Venus and Venn, too sure that they aren't going to be invited, and they both nod at her. Together they all head back towards the house and sit down on the porch in a circle.

"Is it just me or has this group split into…two different segments?" Venus grumbles as she puts her back to the banisters, flipping a cherry lollipop into her mouth.

"It's annoying, but we just have to put up with it," Venn tells her, "We've got to get rid of these aliens and these guys have the most experience with them. Sadly we need them."

"Ryu's gone against them," Venus points out in frustration.

"Yeah, but I can't move their metals, they're not from this dimension," Ryu picks at her nails as she lays her hands in her lap absentmindedly. Her thoughts really aren't here; her eyes following after the turtles who disappear into the woods without Leo who's leaning heavily on his crutch. "Switching subjects," Ryu says suddenly, stopping the conversation from her comrades, "Venus, do you think that you could do something with Leo's leg? Maybe speed up its healing?"

"I already told you, there's nothing wrong with it. Either it's still just weak muscles or it's…"

Ryu lifts her head, "What?"

Venus takes a deep breath and continues a bit slower, as if she's choosing her words carefully so as to not say anything that would come back to bite her in the butt, "I think it's all in his mind."

* * *

"Uh…" Ryu's voice dies in her throat, the rag she'd been using to dust the railing on the stairs slips out of her hands and falls to the floor with a muffled _flop_. Her eyes widen in disbelief, unsure of what she's seeing, blinking in utter bewilderment, "Venus?"

"What?" comes the annoyed responds from the living room.

"I…think I believe you now."

There's silence for a long moment, but then there's the quick, flustered _snap_ of a magazine slapping closed before footsteps come stomping out into the area Ryu stands in, "Believe me about…what…" Venus stops at Ryu's side with a huge grin on her face, the first since arriving at this farmhouse. Swinging an arm over Ryu's shoulder, her smile turns triumphant, "Told you they were real."

Before them, behind Mikey, Donnie, and Raph, standing six foot tall, is none other than a giant bigfoot. Ryu can't really find anything to say at the moment, still trying to get over the fact that all those times Venus had tried to scare her with those tall tales about the yeti living on their mountain…she'd actually been telling her the truth! She'd actually been trying to scare her for real!

 _That little…_ Ryu turns her head slowly to glare at the girl about an inch taller than her and wants nothing more than to shorten her down to her real size: the size of the imp she really is.

Venus suddenly holds out her hand and grins up at bigfoot, "Hi there, I'm Venus. It's a pleasure to meet you, miss….?"

The bigfoot shakes her hand with a weird smile of gapping teeth and seriously chapped lips, but Ryu doesn't say anything; the poor thing looks absolutely sweet underneath all that. That's when Venus's words click in her head, "Wait, 'miss'?"

"Yeah, she's female. Can't you tell? It's kind of obvious," Venus spits at her.

"Uh…" Ryu looks back up at the bigfoot and takes in the creature before her. Nothing about it screams female at all. "Sure," Ryu lies with a big smile.

The bigfoot smiles back and opens her mouth to speak in a deep, booming voice, "My name…Bigfoot."

Ryu's gaze instantly zooms to Mikey, "All of your naming skills and you couldn't come up with anything better?"

"Donnie's fault!" Mikey waves off the blame and zooms up the stairs, but he's stopped by Leo who's hobbling down them.

"What the heck is that?!"

"Bigfoot!" April exclaims from the next floor.

"Whoa!" Casey adds from beside her.

"You can't just bring home bigfoot?!" Leo argues.

"But its hurt," Donnie shows the animal's arm and April hurries down to get a better look.

"She," Venus glares, "She's a _she_."

Donnie and April help Bigfoot into the living room where they all sit on the couch to fix up her arm. Venus and Ryu follow them in to watch from the other side of the coffee table silently. After the arm is bandaged and fixed up, Bigfoot turns to Donnie and smiles.

"Bigfoot…thank Donnie," she says.

From her place beside the coffee table, Ryu rest her chin down on her crossed arms and grins up at Donnie. It's nice to see the kid getting some thanks from someone finally.

"No problem," Donnie waves off her thanks with a kind smile that everyone knows all too well.

Bigfoot's expression suddenly turns worried as she grabs her bandaged arm, "Bad man…after Bigfoot…name…the finger."

Ryu's eyebrows draw together as she listens in, glancing up at Venus who shrugs. _Who the heck would name their kid 'the finger'?_ , Ryu thinks.

"The finger?" Donnie repeats thoughtfully.

"Yeah…very bad mans…" Bigfoot continues. Abruptly she folds her hands together and gazes at Donnie with a very odd expression that Ryu can't exactly place. "But Donnie….good mans…"

"Aw, thanks, Bigfoot," Donnie pats her shoulder. That's when Ryu sits up in realization the kid just made the wrong move. The expression Bigfoot gives Donnie is...

"Donnie very good mans…"

Donnie flinches back, his face going stone cold fear. Ryu jolts to her feet and Venus grabs her elbow suddenly; apparently she's not the only one who recognizes that look. Both of them quickly clamp their hands over their mouths as their eyes widen to the size of saucers on their faces.

"Donnie very good mans…" Bigfoot leans towards him with a completely obvious flirty look on her face, "So good…Bigfoot…" She pauses midsentence and gives Donnie a big kiss on the side of the cheek and Ryu and Venus tear out of the room, across the hall, and into the kitchen where everyone else is sitting around talking. They look up as the girls stampede in, their hands clamped over their mouths tightly, and slam their backs up against the wall on either side of the kitchen door frame.

Venn leans back to raise an eyebrow at them around the back of Leo's head, "Uh…what's up with you two?"

First it's a snort from Venus and then they both collapse to the floor in a fit of loud laughter that neither of them can control. Curious, all the guys stand up from the table and rush into the living room just in time to see Bigfoot pick Donnie up a big hug and hold him close.

When Venus and Ryu return to the room, the guys are laughing even harder than they were and that just gets them laughing all over again. Poor Donnie gazes at the floor helplessly as the other's around him laugh their faces off without a sign of stopping in sight.

It's only the shock of cold that shoots up through the floor and up Ryu's spine that gets her to stop, instantly turning her focus to the song sung to her from the earth below her.

 _ **In…der…wa…ch…!**_

She narrows her eyes, straining to hear it more clearly, but with all the noise from everyone's teasing it's almost impossible. Her glare turns to the group around her in frustration; it's good to laugh every so often and yes it's kind of funny that Bigfoot has a thing for Donnie but enough is enough.

Venus being the loudest, she turns her attention to the olive skinned girl in front of her.

"Venus, shut up!" Ryu roars over the laughter. "All of you shut it!"

Slowly everyone turns to her with a mix of confusion, anger, and surprise, but Ryu's already tuning the earth's song back into her mind.

 _ **Intruder! Watch!**_

Her eyes dart to the window picking up the tree line in an instant. Something's there. Moving. Watching.

 _Intruder,_ she thinks. Ryu ducks quickly out of the room and out the front door to the top of the steps. The wind meets her, blowing her hair out of her face. Something taints it sharply, but her nose isn't strong enough to place it.

"What's your damage?" Venus barks.

Ryu reaches back and grabs the front of Venn's shirt beside the dark skinned girl and drags him outside, "You smell that?"

Venn takes a deep inhale, but shakes his head, "No, not at-." He pauses, taking another deeper inhale. There's another beat before his eyes too start scanning the tree line beyond the yard. Suddenly those trees don't feel safe; their shadows feel dangerous.

"I don't smell nothing," Venus goes to Ryu's other side and takes a deep whiff.

"It's 'anything' and you're not a Fallen so your nose sucks," Ryu grumbles, shushing her.

"I'll go check it out, don't kill each other while I'm gone," Venn demands as he pulls the hood up on his sweat shirt and jogs off into the woods, the darkness eating him almost too quickly for their taste.

"Where's he going?"

"Running," Venus and Ryu say in union as they spin around to meet the eyes of the rest of the group hovering behind them. The word may have been a lie, but why stir up any more panic than there already is?

* * *

It's not until the early hours of the next morning that Venn returns and speaks to both Venus and Ryu in the darkness of the room. Someone had been watching the house, someone with some sort of blasting powder that Venn couldn't place so it had to be a home mixture. That means that, at all times, at least one of them would have to be on look out in case something happened. They'd have to find some way of keeping everyone out of the woods without raising suspicions about the intruder.

So for the next two days, Ryu watched and waited for something to happen, keeping a close eye on the amusing relationship between Donnie and Bigfoot. Donnie obviously didn't feel comfortable with it, continuously avoiding her or running in the opposite direction. It reminded her a lot of how April acted towards Donnie.

One afternoon, after Donnie, Mikey, and Bigfoot had returned from being sent out into the woods by Raph to study up on their 'camouflage', Ryu is coming down the stairs from the bathroom drying her hair with a towel and overhears Donnie and Raph talking in the living room.

"Ugh, this is so uncomfortable," Donnie confesses as he glances out the door of the living room as if he's on look out, "Bigfoot follows me around everywhere like a love struck puppy."

"Now you know how April feels," Raph says from the couch where he's busy playing video games. "Like I told you before, Don, we're mutants, she's a girl. It's never going to happen with you and April."

Ryu back steps her way back up the stairs to lean against the wall next to the bathroom with a sigh. She slides down the wall until she's sitting against it and wraps her arms around her knees. _Why does it feel like he was talking about…someone else when he said that?_ , Ryu thinks, rolling over the words Raph had just said. His tone had taken a duller note at that last sentence; it almost sounded like he didn't want to believe the words himself. _Was he just sad for his brother?_

Unable to take the tight feeling in her chest, or the unexpected feeling of claustrophobia being in the house, Ryu skips down the steps and rushes out the front door. She gulps in deep swallows of the cool night air as she tries to calm herself down.

A loud _thump_ makes her jump and turn to find a shadow landing on the grass off to her left at the far end of the porch. It's Bigfoot. Ryu decides to follow after her to find out how she is since she hadn't spoken to her since they had left to go train in the woods. Bigfoot stops at the open door to the barn, refusing to go in.

Ryu raise an eyebrow in confusion and as she comes closer she can hear Leo and Casey inside laughing. She pauses again.

"Do you think she's his type?" Casey barks a chuckle.

Leo laughs at the impossibility, "Maybe after a shave!"

Ryu's anger hits the roof, her mood already set off its balance by Raph's words, and now Casey and Leo have got to be so mean?

Bigfoot spins around and races off crying into the woods right past Ryu who tries to stop her unsuccessfully. Casey and Leo obviously heard Bigfoot and come rushing out a second later from the barn.

"Aw, man," Casey groans.

"We didn't mean to…hurt her feelings?" Leo confesses.

"What's going on?" April calls from the house beyond.

Ryu spins enough to slam her foot into the ground and the earth tears up at the boys' feet, tossing them back onto their butt. "Didn't mean it?!" She screams, "I don't buy that for a second! You're all just a bunch of inconsiderate, heartless morons!"

"What happened?" Venn calls, running up with Venus, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie in tow.

The second Ryu sets eyes on Raph, her anger skyrockets. "Ask the jerks in this screwed up group," she bores her eyes into Raph's gaze before finishing, "All of them."

With that, Ryu kicks up dirt as she takes off after Bigfoot into the night.

Venus turns to the two boys sitting up on the ground, "What did you do?"

"Why are you asking us?" Casey snaps defensively.

Venus steps up into his face, forcing him to stumble a few inches back, "Because Ryu doesn't lose her anger very often but when she does, she starts finally speaking up for herself. She spits out the truth and the only jerks I see standing here now are you two and anger-management boy over here."

Jabbing a finger at Raph, he blink and drops his glare to the ground.

"We were talking…about Bigfoot and…we said some things we probably shouldn't have," Leo admits guiltily.

"Probably…shouldn't have?!" Venus erupts.

Venn grabs her around the waist and pulls her back behind him before she can rip the guys' faces off with her claws, "What exactly did you say?"

Casey and Leo glance at each other remorsefully but Leo is the one to answer, "That she'd be Donnie's type if she'd just shave."

"What?" Donnie yelps at the back of the group.

"You two really are a buncha inconsiderate, heartless jerks!" Venus snarls over Venn's shoulder, "Ryu should've buried you both six feet in the ground!"

"Calm down," Venn tells her.

"Don't tell me to calm down. These idiots deserve more than what they got!"

Venn grabs her by the shoulders and moves to stop her, "Breathe!"

Venus crosses her arms stubbornly and turns to give them all her back.

"We've got to go find Bigfoot," Donnie says.

They all nod, but then a static sound makes them pause.

"Was that your radio?" Venus perks up, glancing down at the back of his belt. "The screen is lighting up."

Venn pulls the radio off his belt and is about to press down the button when another static sound crackles and a familiar voice breaks through.

"Stay out of the woods!" Ryu's voice hisses through. "Stay where you are!"

Venus snatches the radio away and holds the side button down, "Why? What's going on?"

Venn takes it back, "Ryu, where are you? What's happening?"

"Stay out of the woods!" Ryu's voice hisses back even louder. "It's not-!"

There's a loud explosion from far off and they all duck down in alarm before looking up at a giant black cloud spilling out the tops of the trees and into the night sky. As the roar subsides, a scream is heard.

Normal at first, the scream becomes increasingly louder and louder until it changes into something much more feral. Venn and Venus throw each other a look.

"Oh…"

"Chiz…" Venn finishes her statement as they turn their gazes back to the dark woods.

"Watch your language, this is a PG story," Venus smacks his arm before they both take off into the night to follow after their friend.

* * *

Ryu can only stare down at herself, can only focus on the blood pouring out of her shoulder and down her arm, can only focus on the pain sending her body into a state of stress.

A state of absolute stress, a state where the survival of the body is threatened.

That's what Ryu remembers the Dragons telling her, those are the words she keeps rolling over in her mind as her vision starts to change, crashing in on itself as it starts to feel like she's looking down a tunnel.

Other than that, it's hard not to notice the arrow protruding out of her left shoulder, its black feathers resembling one of death's own weapons. Her breathing is labored, strict against her ribcage. Her heart is pounding terribly, sending adrenaline pumping into her veins.

She lets her tight fists loosen so that the radio she'd been carrying in the side pocket of her cargo pants falls to the ground with a loud _clack_. She can feel her power swirl dangerously at the sound, making her head spin and goosebumps flush out across her skin.

 _Pull it out_ , she orders herself, demanding her body to move, _Pull it out, Ryu. Move!_

"Ryu!"

Someone calls to her, the voice sounding far off as if she's underwater. It's nearly drowned out by the song of her power screaming to be released. She forces her right hand to move, to lift up and take the shaft of the black arrow in her hand.

"Ryu."

"No, stop!"

Ryu lifts her heavy head a little to look out across the way through her bangs. Blurry images, outlines of forms she knows. She can't tell through the tunnel vision still trying desperately to crash in on itself and turn her sight dark.

"Don't move!"

Ryu's eyes dart to the side of the group of blurry images as one comes to a skidding stop beside the tallest one, a male she's sure.

"Ryu."

The next voice is softer, calmer.

 _Pull it out, Ryu! Move!_ , she turns her attention back down to the arrow in her hands, feeling the warm, wet blood still flowing out of her chest. _Pull it out! Now!_

With one solid jerk, Ryu dislodges it out of the tree behind her and then slowly pulls it through her. Each inch is agonizing as she's forced to live through the feeling of the arrow shaft inside of her muscles, her tissues. It's wrong! It's not natural!

 _Pull it out!_

With one final pull, the arrow comes out and she holds it out in front of her. Under the shade of the tree, she doesn't have any moonlight to see by, but the red blood still shines through her tunnel vision all the same, the outline of the arrow tip sharp and clear to her vision.

Something explodes nearby and her power screams again. Ryu turns her head slowly in its direction.

"Ryu. Ryu don't!"

Those voices again.

 _So distant_ , she thinks without looking back at them.

"Don't!"

Her feet move her before she has a chance to think the command and she's suddenly flying through the trees. Each tree trunk like a haze as she tears past them, whooshing right by without stirring so much as a blade of grass. There's a roar, one she recognizes, an angry shout, one that she's targeting. Then a dark laughter follows.

She doesn't take a step to stop. Instead she simply leaps up and brings her fist into the ground with a loud bang. Tremors shake the earth and the ground splits, pulling down dirt and plants into the chasm that opens up.

Someone shouts in alarm and she looks up to find a figure stumbling back away from the tear that travels towards him. Her tunnel vision narrows, targeting in, and the figure clears up, sharpening in her sight.

A bigger man with some kind of Mohawk looking hairstyle and decked out in outdoor gear. That's all she sees but that's all she really needs. She'd seen him attack and trap Bigfoot. She'd seen him shoot an arrow at her dozens of times and somehow manage to pin her with one.

That's all she needs. That's all she cares about.

The man loads another arrow into his bow again and aims. When he fires, this time the arrow doesn't come at her as it had last time. This time it's slow as if time is stopping around her. Ryu's sure that she could run to the ocean and back and the arrow would still not have reached the place where she stands.

So she waits patiently, letting her power fight against the sudden limbo that has taken over her, and then just as the arrow is about to pierce her forehead she steps back casually. The arrow creeps by her face like a snail and Ryu pulls her hand up just as slow, feeling the earth respond to her and shoot up just as sluggish to become the dart board for the arrow.

The man jerks back in surprise as Ryu pushes her fists forward and sends the rock flying over her shoulder at him, arrow and all. It hits him square in the gut, knocking him back a ways, before another explosion roars to life from the arrow she'd sent back at him.

Time goes back to normal then as the smell of burnt ground fills her nose and suddenly she feels light headed.

Her mind spins, her knees shake weakly, and her power fades back to normal within her. _I've…lost too much…blood_ , she thinks.

"Ryu!"

The cry is slow, sluggish as time slows for a split second, and she looks up just as her legs give way. Her vision is slowly starting to creep out of its tunnel vision, clearing back to her regular sight, and everything around her comes back into focus just a second before she passes out.

All she can remember seeing before everything goes black is a set of green eyes blazing wildly behind a sea of red. She blacks out before she even hits the ground; never feeling the impact.

* * *

 _Author's Note:_

 _Okay, see you guys next week for the next chapter of "Strike of the Dragon"!_

-Ravyne


	5. Chapter 4: 3-2(Part 2) Raph

**Hello, everyone. I'm back from vacation and already we've had a reviewer. Thank you so much, "Bigfan" for the kind words and we hope you enjoy this new chapter. As previously stated (at least I hope Ravyne stated since I haven't gotten around to looking over the chapters she's posted in my absence) I will be posting a new chapter every Sunday from here on out. That's it.**

 **Enjoy and let us know your feedback. All advice is welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **4**

 **3-2.2: "Raph"**

Ryu opens her heavy eyelids, each one feeling like a ton of lead, and blinks. The room is odd, nothing like her own with its bamboo blinds and red rugs over the dark stained wood floors. This one if filled with pale yellow, frilly curtains and a pink comforter laid out over the length of her body.

Her eyes widen, confused. Sitting up, Ryu looks around the room in wonder. Where the heck is she?! This isn't her room. This isn't even the living room where she fell asleep last night. Beside her on the small nightstand is a bowl with water in it, while a rag hangs out over the side.

The water is swirling red, the end of the rag dyed crimson.

Scrambling frantically, Ryu hurries to throw the blankets off of her and get out of the room, but her legs give out the second she tries to put weight on them and her knees slam into the floor loudly. A sharp, terrible pain, shoots across her chest and Ryu instinctually curls in on herself, folding her arms over her chest to protect herself.

"Whoa, whoa! Calm down!"

Someone comes into the room and takes her by the shoulders gently and she looks up into Donnie's face. He smiles down at her as he helps her sit up slowly off her knees and back against the frame of the bed. The floor is cold through the cotton pants she usually sleeps in and that's when she notices Donnie pulling away the shoulder of her shirt from her neck. She's about to slap his face for being such a pervert, but then her eyes stop dead on her chest.

Her whole shoulder and chest are wrapped up in bandages but one main spot on her upper chest, in the hallow between her collar bone and shoulder, is padded down with a lot of gauze.

"Holy cheese, what'd I do?" Ryu whispers, reaching up to touch the bandages there, head whirling for some sort of answers.

"Nothing major," Donnie grins sheepishly, "Just got short by an arrow."

Ryu pulls her eyes up, "Beg your pardon?"

"Let's talk about it later when everybody gets back. First off, we've got to get some food into you; you're looking pale. Do you think you can stand?"

Ryu lets him go to her good side and wrap one arm around her back and his other hand under her good arm before lifting her up as if she practically weighs nothing. They wait for a second, half expecting Ryu to get lightheaded again and fall back to the floor, but when nothing happens, she smiles.

"Excellent," Donnie grins, "Now comes the big test. Do you think you can make it downstairs?"

Ryu stretches her legs, bending her knees. The weakness she'd felt there before is gone with the wind—no pun intended—so she nods again, "Yeah, I think I can."

Donnie keeps his hands where they are and together they creep down the stairs at a slow pace. Down at the bottom, Leo comes hobbling out of the living room on his crutch with a smile. "Hey, I thought I heard someone dying up there. How're you doing?"

Ryu grins, "Good, I guess. Still alive, so I can't really complain. We're going to have to share that crutch now though."

He laughs as they all head slowly into the kitchen, unaware of Raph who watches them from the doorway to the living room. Donnie helps her to sit down at the table before standing up and going to raid the cabinets, "So what would you like for breakfast?"

"It's morning?" Ryu asks, glancing out the window at the sun lit yard outside.

"Yeah, you've been out most of the night," Leo informs her. "Raph-."

Something flies into the room and pops Leo on the back of the head, making him growl under his breath.

"I mean we all took turns watching you last night."

Ryu's eyes shift briefly to the doorway to the kitchen before moving back to his. He nods with a knowing smile and Ryu lowers her gaze to the table. Lifting her good arm, she rests her elbow on the table top and rubs her forehead, "Donnie, I think I'll just go for some chocolate if you have any. I got a feeling that today I'm going to need the caffeine."

"Not too sure about the chocolate, but we do have this," Donnie sets down a box of cereal in front of her and Ryu all but swoons.

"Count Chocula!" She squeals excitedly as Donnie grabs her a bowl and spoon before fishing the milk out of the fridge. She digs into the cereal, so glad that her right arm wasn't injured, and talks around mouthfuls of her favorite food in the world, "So where is everybody?"

"April is outside cutting wood, Mikey and Venus are catching up on some chores around here, and Casey went with Venn to the store to restock the kitchen," Leo says as Donnie sits down at the other end of the table opposite him.

Ryu nearly spits up, "Venus and Mikey? Doing chores? Around here?"

Leo raises an eyebrow at her response, "Not something she does?"

She scoffs around another mouthful of deliciousness, "This is Venus we're talking about here. All she does besides training is lounge about and eat candy most of the day. Work really isn't her thing. Now, throw Mikey in on that mix. What do you think you get?"

Donnie's face turns to worry, "Two people with too much time on their hands."

"Trouble," Leo adds.

Donnie is up in a flash and zips out the side door of the kitchen before either of them can say anything. Ryu quickly swallows the last bit of milk in her bowl before stretching to her feet and going to wash it out in the sink, "I'd better go help him look for them. Venus doesn't really take to authority too well."

"And she survived your teachers?" Leo chuckles.

"It's still a mystery to all of us how she remained alive long enough to pass her trial with that mouth of hers," Ryu grins over her shoulder.

"Hey," Leo lowers his voice before standing up and taking a few limps towards her. Ryu turns to face him. "I just wanted to make sure that you know…we all understand why you left. Venn and Venus explained it to us."

Ryu sighs in relief before finding her smile within her again, "T-thanks, but I understand why any of you would be mad. I know you, Mikey, and Raph heard what I said the Splinter. It was wrong and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left the way I did."

"But we understand why you did. Donnie explained that to us too," Leo smiles wider and grabs her good shoulder gently. "You're still a part of our family whether you like it or not."

Those simple words are all she's needed to hear since she left. That simple reacceptance into their lives again. Ryu lets out a relieved laugh before hugging Leo gently around the neck with her good arm.

"Thank you!" She whispers. When she lets him go, she throws a thumb over her shoulder and starts to back away towards the door, "I better go find Venus."

Leo nods and heads out of the opposite end of the room, no doubt back to the living room where he'd been originally. Ryu smiles up at the sky as she steps out the side door and takes in a deep breath of air, a huge weight lifted off her shoulders finally. Now all that's left is the final weight; a weight heavier than the first two had been.

A weight that's going to be a bit more stubborn than the last ones.

Not spotting Venus or Mikey at the back side of the house, she heads back around the way she came and spots Donnie talking to April who is splitting wood a few paces past the side door to the kitchen, opposite of her direction. How had she missed them, she'll never know, but now that she has seen them she's going to take this opportunity to spy.

Ryu ducks behind a bush, as close to the door as she can dare, and turns to keep her ear to them while still able to keep the bush from poking at her bad arm. Just faintly she can pick up the last few words spoken between them.

"…I'm just…a mutant," Donnie sighs in defeat.

April digs the toe of her shoe into the dirt before smiling up at him, "You're not just a mutant, Donnie. You're my mutant." She steps up onto her tip toes and kisses Donnie square on the lips, Ryu's jaw practically falling to the ground. April turns from him with a smile and returns to the house through the side door, missing Ryu completely. When the door slams shut, she sneaks in too while Donnie is stuck in laa-laa land, his eyes virtually spinning with confusion.

Ryu slips right past April who is busy at the sink and then right into the living room where she breaks into a grin and drops herself onto the couch. Raph and Leo blink at her in surprise as she props her feet up on the coffee table with a big goofy smile.

"I win," she tells the boys triumphantly.

"Win…what?" Leo asks.

"Yeah, win what?" Venus repeats his question as she comes into the room wiping a towel along the backside of her neck. Ryu can hear familiar steps falter behind her as Venus turns to the approach-ee, "You okay, Donnie?"

"Uh…"

Ryu grins wider the second she hears the poor turtle's blank response, obviously still dazed from what happened. She picks up the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, leans right back into the couch, and pops a handful into her mouth, "So how was your first kiss, Don?"

"WHAT?"

Ryu snorts around a mouthful of popcorn as everyone jumps up to dash to Donnie's side and hammer him with questions. She turns around on the couch to prop her good arm over the back of the couch to watch them with a smile.

When Casey and Venn walk through the front door, Mikey runs off to tell them and Donnie tackles him to the ground before he can open his mouth, finally coming alive out of his daze to threaten him angrily.

Ryu turns back to the TV where a video game is paused and she props her feet back up as Leo and Raph retake their seats on either side of her. She's surprised at this considering she hasn't really gotten around to apologizing to Raph yet and here he is sitting down next to her as if she's no longer a disease. Leo leans to eye his brother in shock as well but picks up his controller to continue the video game.

Ryu watches them play for a while, glancing at their hands to figure out how they're playing, and eventually becomes too curious for her own good, "So…how do you play this?"

"It doesn't matter," Venus answers, "You don't play video games."

"So?" Ryu catches the controller that Leo hands to her and he explains what each button does and then Raph presses the play button. Within seconds he demolishes her character and the screen blinks 'LOSER'. Ryu drops her controller into her lap, glaring at the TV, "Well, that's discouraging."

"Loser," Venus mocks around a mouthful of lollipop as she opens up a magazine and sits back in the chair next to the couch.

* * *

April sets the bowl of scrambled eggs down on the table so that people can start serving themselves but as she pops the spoon down next to it, she notices that someone is missing. "Hey, where's Ryu?" she asks.

Venn shrugs and turns to Venus who has her nose in another magazine and blowing a grape gum bubble out of her lips. It pops as she looks up, "Why do you always look at me?"

"Because you're a girl," he responds.

She lowers her eyes into a glare, "So you're sexist."

"No, girls talk to each other."

Venus scoffs and flips the page of the magazine, "Not these two girls. We hate each other remember?" She pops another bubble.

Venn groans and pull out his radio, holding the button down, "Testing, testing. Calling-."

"Calling Earth Worm!" Venus cuts him off.

"Would you-?!"

" **That is not funny,** " Ryu's voice comes in through the radio, cutting off Venn's lecture. " **What do you want?** "

"Where are you? Breakfast is ready," April calls across the table.

There's a static noise and then, " **I grabbed an apple before leaving for my run. Sorry! I left a note on the front door.** "

Venus chokes on her gum, "That was a note?"

Everyone at the table groans.

"My bad, I thought it was trash so I threw it away," she smiles guiltily.

"Trash?" Venn glares at her.

"It was on the floor!"

" **Moving on!** " Ryu cuts them off, " **I'll be back in an hour.** "

"Well, we're going to be training outside."

" **Fine,** " she answers Venn.

Raph catches this and swallows his food in a few gulps. Leo eyes him curiously, "Uh, Raph, you okay?"

"Yeah, just want to start training," he responds. "I'm going to take Mikey and Donnie out for some more forest training."

"Again?" Donnie whines.

"Nooo!" Mikey smacks his head on the table.

"No complaining," Raph growls as he stands up from the table and heads out the door. Mikey and Donnie take a last few bites of their breakfast and then slug their way out after him. "Same as before, I'm giving you ten minutes to find a place to hide. If you can stay hidden for an hour, then you don't have to clean out the chicken coop."

Donnie and Mikey obey with groans and mumbled complaints as they jog half-heartedly out into the woods. Raph starts pacing, his patience running lower and lower with each step; this is the first chance he's had since Bigfoot left and he's not about to pass it up. Just as he's about to take off, the front door to the house opens and everyone comes out for training.

Raph grumbles under his breath, rushes towards the tree line, and vanishes before anyone can see him. Finally in the forest's solid embrace, he keeps running until he spots any signs of anyone else in the woods besides him and his brother.

He stops by a tree when something catches his eye: a broken limb on the ground. He leans down to examine it and sure enough, a trail of boot prints travel off into the woods. He knows these footprints.

* * *

Ryu sits down on the boulder buried into the side of the steep incline of the hill and looks out over the tree tops around her. This far up, she can tell the slight change in the air; living in the mountains will give you a sensitivity to stuff like that.

The wind stirs quietly, playing with her hair that she pulls loose from her hair band to run her fingers through, and she breathes it in appreciatively. She's always loved these times to herself, always looking forward to going on her morning jogs, and it's these times that she's able to really meditate and clear her mind.

She crosses her legs indian-style and closes her eyes. The world around her, the birds with their songs and the trees with their whispers, sings to her softly as she slips into her meditative state. Her breathing levels out and her heartbeat slows to a tranquil state as time passes around her. All her worries fall away to the side to be sorted out later and the weight on her shoulders eases a bit, her neck feeling less like it's going to snap at any second.

 _If only this could last past meditation_ , she thinks. _Constantly being able to remain in a meditation state would be way better on my blood pressure_.

Something moves behind her. A snap of a twig, a shift across the dirt.

Her eyebrow twitches as her hearing perks up to figure out the source. Everything goes quiet again. _I wonder if there are mountain lions out here_ , Ryu wonders.

She focuses on her power deep inside her, feeling it come to life in her veins and flow through her body. Ryu pushes it down her spine, through the boulder, and into the ground, feeling it pulse out around her through the dirt. The waves beat through each blade of grass, every pebble, all the creatures and insects hiding around her, and deep down into the core of the hill under her.

Her lips pull to the side a little, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

The feet move closer towards her but the earth doesn't sing out a warning, finding no ill intent in the heart beat of the other. Ryu's hands are held in a circle in her lap, her fingers laid across each other while her thumb tips meet above them, and she patiently starts tapping her bottom fingers against the knuckles of her others. When the person is right behind her…

"Don't even think about it," she warns, not bothering to open her eyes to acknowledge him.

Raph drops his arms back by his sides and rolls his eyes, "How'd you know it was me?"

Ryu raises an eyebrow over her closed eyes, "You step harder on your left foot than you do on your right, you always take a breath every two steps, and your heartbeat is always racing when you're about to try and scare someone. Also-."

"Alright, I get it," he grunts as he sits down on the rock with his back to hers.

The silence that comes afterwards starts off nice at first but thickens into tension as the seconds go by. Ryu's not really sure how to take it. He's talking to her sure, but is it a good thing?

"So…" Ryu starts, "Are we…talking now?"

Raph leans his elbows on his knees and stares down at the small patch of grass poking out from under the boulder between his feet. The wind blows through it, the tall blades of grass dancing to the song. "Yeah. We are," He answers, "Donnie told me what you said; about why you left. I understand."

"Why?"

He blinks at her quick response, "Donnie told me. He said you went home to clear your head. You've spent your whole life trying to get revenge on this guy and then he was gone. I can't even begin to imagine what you were going through."

"No," Ryu drops her head into her hands, "No, no, no. You're not supposed to understand. You're supposed to be mad. I didn't blame you for being mad because of the way I left. I know you, and Mikey, and Leo all heard what I said to master Splinter. You should all be mad at me. I ran off like a coward, I said all those cruel things to sensei just because I got mad. I don't deserve your understanding! You need to yell at me!"

Her voice begins to take on a high not of panic at the end of her rant and, fearing that she is going to break, Raph jumps up and goes to her side. As he kneels down in front of her, Ryu quickly pulls her knees up to her chest to escape his sight. She just wants to disappear; she doesn't deserve his forgiveness. She never will.

"Stop it," Raph orders, "You were on a different path then, Splinter told us. But that's why you left, right? You wanted to move on from all that."

Ryu squeezes her eyes shut, burying her face in her knees, but finds it in her to nod.

"Right?"

Again, she nods, "Y-yeah, I feel like I have."

"So…if you see him again…"

She lifts her head a bit. Ryu already knows what he wants to say without even having to have him finish his sentence. Deep down, she's not really sure what she'd do, but she wants to believe that she's found it in her heart to… _No_ , she stops her thoughts, _I can't ever forgive him for what he did._

Ryu shakes her head, "I…don't know what I'd do if I saw him again, but…I feel like I have moved on…wait…" She suddenly catches up with her own thoughts and glances up at him suspiciously, "Don't you mean 'if I ever _saw_ him again…?"

Raph presses his lips together into a tight line and stands up quickly to scratch the back of his head nervously.

"Raph?"

He turns away and she jumps to her feet to turn him back.

"What aren't you telling me?"

Raph drops his hand and tries to meet her gaze but when he can't he quickly lets his eyes fall to the ground, "Depends…"

"On…?" Ryu presses, suspiciously.

"What you want to hear."

She grabs the front of his shell and jerks him forward until their foreheads meet. "The truth," Ryu growls out through her teeth.

Raph grins sheepishly, "Well…um…Tigerclaw…isn't exactly….gone."

She lets go of his shell and collapses back onto the boulder again, her knees quickly giving out to her weight. Her breath hitches in her throat as she tries to find her words, "I…Okay…that's…okay. Yeah."

"You sure?"

Ryu shakes her head, "I won't…I won't know until I see him again. If I see him again. We'll just have to wait and see."

The wind picks up suddenly and whips crazily around them, spinning Ryu's hair wildly about her face. She growls in frustration and stands up as she combs it back with her fingers and tries to get it back under her control.

"Seriously, the news said nothing about freak wind storms today!" she complains.

Raph can just stare at her, watching her hair swirl in the wind madly. For so long he's seen her always wear it in a braid, so it's never really caught his attention, but now with it free from the red band that usually binds it now he suddenly has the urge to-.

"What are you…?"

Raph blinks pulling his hand back from her hair quickly, "Nothing. Come on, let's go."

Ryu watches him turn around and head back the way he'd come, studying the hand that had reached up out of nowhere to stroke through her hair the way he had. She'd been caught off guard by the look in his eyes, soft and so full of wonder. She's never imagined he'd ever have eyes like that. They've always been so bright and full of fire, but never a sign of having a gentle side.

A smile pulls at the corner of her mouth as Ryu jogs to catch up with him and wraps her arm through his, "You know."

"What?"

"You really are a nice guy," She grins, "No matter how much you deny it."

Raph spins a glare on her and Ryu takes off to escape his wrath.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anybody!"

"Shut up!" He growls, only making Ryu laugh that much harder.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Also just a friendly note for readers. I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of new "affects" (as I like to call them) in the text itself. I did this on purpose for the sole purpose of driving everyone mad, but also because it is vital to the storyline. Here's a layout of what each "affect" means:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

 **Hope this is confusing enough. See how many you can spot in the future chapters to come. :)**

 **-Katt B.**


	6. Chapter 5: 3-3 Buried Secrets

**I'm having Ravyne do a profile of Venus and Venn so that should be up on her DeviantArt account soon. The second I hear anything, I'll post a link to them on our profile so keep an eye out for that. Here's chapter 5.**

 **Enjoy and let us know your feedback. All advice is welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **5**

 **3-3: "Buried Secrets"**

Ryu slams her head into the steering wheel again as she pops the van into park the second they pull up next to the farm house. Her head is back to pounding yet again, driving a headache into her skull.

Venus looks up over the top of her magazine to glance at her, "Another headache?"

Ryu grunts in complaint.

"That's, what, the twentieth one you've had since we got here?" Venus rolls her eyes as she flips the page, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say they were getting worse."

Ryu sits up and drops her head onto the back of the seat to stare up at the roof of the van, "I'll be in in a minute, no need to wait up."

"Okay," Venus says all too eagerly as she hops out of the car and skips up to the house.

"Hateful hag," she mutters after the rude girl. When she sits up again, blinking against the pain, she spots Venn on the porch where Venus is chatting with him. His familiar, Haritos, sits perched on his hand lifting his beak and closing his eyes as Venus rubs him under his chin. Haritos had been Venn's familiar before he became a Dragon, but when he turned Fallen, Haritos came back to him; Venn's memories hadn't. He no longer remembered his time as a Dragon or anything before, no Fallen did. He only knows what the other Dragons have told him.

Haritos was so brave and respectful towards everyone. He's sweet and calm, but can be super playful if anyone ever brings out a bag of grasshoppers.

Ryu sinks farther into her seat until they're out of her sight, the scene striking her heart like a knife through paper. She reaches into her side pocket on her cargo pants for her phone and taps the screen. Instantly a picture of her and Gigi grinning like lunatics appears on the screen, pushing the knife deeper into her heart.

 _I'm sorry, Gigi. I'm so sorry._

A knock raps on her window and then her door is pulled open sharply. "Ryu?" April calls.

Ryu starts, fumbling to catch her phone as it flops between her hands and then quickly shoves it away into her pocket again to hide the picture, "Yeah, yeah! I'm coming." She smiles at April and Donnie who both raise an eyebrow suspiciously, and she hops out of the van to stand with them, "So what's up?"

"Time for cleaning," April smiles.

Ryu forces a smile and nods. Yep, time for cleaning.

* * *

Everyone takes a stance, readying to battle, their faces determined. "Everyone ready?" April calls to her friends.

"Casey Jones was born ready," Casey grins, still refusing to give up the third person act no matter how many times Venus bugs him about it.

"Let's do this!" Raph agrees.

"Y'all do know that this is just…a house…right?" Ryu asks from her place by the door while Venn and Venus lean against the wall next to her, gazing at the others as if they've gone crazy.

April, Casey, and the turtles all take off screaming their battle cries as if they're going off to war and Ryu just rubs her forehead in disbelief, her headache pounding worse in her skull. "I'm surrounded by weirdos," she mumbles to herself.

"Well, you have fun with those 'weirdos', we're going to go clean up the yard," Venus rolls her eyes as she pops her bubble gum and heads out the door with Venn. Ryu shakes her head and vanishes into the kitchen to start her side of the chores. She takes on the light fixture above the table first and then works her way from the top of the room to the bottom, stepping out to borrow Leo's mop for a second to do the wood floors last. As she's working her way backwards out of the kitchen to the doorway leading to the foot of the stairs, her headache suddenly pinches tightly at the back of her skull and something like a screaming siren echoes through her mind.

 _Geez, these headache are getting on my nerves_ , she grumbles to herself, _even my power is getting frustrated._

Just beyond the headache, something whistles at her, but she can't make out what it is. She starts to focus in on it, trying to bring it forward to her through the thick pain in her head, but someone taps her arm. She looks up at Leo who points down at the mop in her hands.

"You done?"

"Oh, yeah, thanks," Ryu smiles.

They both look up as Raph stops beside them and then a shout comes barreling down the steps. "AGH!"

Leo, Ryu, and Raph all jerk their heads up and cry out in alarm as Mikey comes bouncing out of control down the stairway. They all fall to the floor, Leo ducking into the kitchen to avoid the collision, and Ryu feet are slung around across the floor in front of the door.

"Ow!" She sits up off of Mikey and glares down at him, "What just happened?"

"Mikey! I just vacuumed!" Leo protests, looking at the mess of his younger brother's spilled water bucket all across the floor.

"Oh yeah?" Raph growls as he shoves the younger turtle off of him, "Well, I'm about to mop the floor with him!"

As Mikey flies back, Ryu goes to move out of the way and her ankle twists, caught in something on the floor. "Ow, ow, ow, ow!" She tries to move her foot out of the rug, but when she looks down she finds out that it's not the rug tangled up in her feet, but an old metal hoop-like door handle attached to a trap door.

Her jaw drops slack as she slowly untangles her foot and pulls her legs out of the way to look at the door.

"Uh…" she starts, turning her head up but keeping her eyes planted on the door, "April!"

"Yeah?" The redhead leans out over the top of the railing to look down on her. She spots the door and gasps, "What is that?"

"You've never seen this before?" Ryu asks slowly, pointing at it and raising her eyebrows.

"No, I didn't even know we had a basement."

The front door opens but no one turns to see who it is. "Hey, what was that loud bag?" Venn asks.

"And the annoying screaming," Venus adds in her usual negative tone.

They both glance at the others, following their gazes, and spot the trap door too, saying in union, "Oh."

"What do you suppose is down there?" Leo wonders aloud.

Mikey suddenly leaps up to hide behind Raph in fear, "Evil clown. EVIL CLOWN!"

"Stop that! I hate clowns!" Venus growls, slapping the younger turtle on the back of the head.

"Only one way to find out," Raph says, flipping his sai in his hands before slipping the tips of the blades under the edge of the door and flipping it open. It fights against him for a second, but eventually the door gives way and pops open obediently.

They all huddle close to peer down into the impossible darkness that swallows the rickety stairs that lead below. Ryu blinks in curiosity, "Sooooooo…who wants to go down the creepy, dark stairway to the murky basement first?"

"Well…since you asked," Venus starts.

"NOT IT!" everyone exclaims instantly, taking a step back from the door.

Ryu stands up straight after a delayed moment of reaction and blinks in alarm. She's the only one left near the door. "Ugh! Seriously?!" she groans loudly.

"Have fun," Venus pats her shoulder, gazing down the dark hatch warily.

"Hateful hag," Ryu grumbles through her teeth and she steps down on the first step gingerly. It takes her weight with a loud, slow groan and she sighs. With each step she takes, the darkness becomes thicker and thicker; she can almost feel it physically across her skin. Her hair starts to stand on end as she comes to the point where she can't even see a few inches in front of her face. There's no way it can be this dark down here, this fast. As she moves, Ryu looks back up the stairs over her shoulder, back at the faces of her friends who stare down after her cautiously, and she's suddenly hit with a feeling that this won't be the last time she'll have to leave them for the dark.

 _Well, duh, Ryu_ , she tells herself, _you already know this. You know the risks of your actions. You chose this path. Now woman-up!_

The next step falls out from under her and down she goes. "Crap!" her shoulders and back slam into the old wood as she tumbles down to the bottom and dust kicks up around her as she does. Ryu breaks out into a fit of coughs.

"Are you okay?" April calls down to her.

"Yeah, I'm good, it's not like I fell down a flight of stairs or anything."

"Oh, good," Mikey grins, "Then what did you hit?"

Raph smacks him, "She was being sarcastic, genius."

"Do you see anything?" Venus calls down.

Ryu rolls her eyes, "I don't know, Venus, can you see me?"

"Um…no."

"Then obviously I can't! Do you guys have a flashlight or something you can get me?" Ryu sits up and starts brushing dirt off of her arms and shirt. Upstairs, people are moving about, and then a few moments later something comes thumping down the steps with repeated _clacks_. It lands in the dirt a few inches from her and Ryu feels around for it. Her fingers find cool metal and instantly, her power sings out to it, glad to have a weapon in this unknown area around her with no way to see. "You couldn't just walk it down to me?" Ryu calls back up.

"I'm not going down there. There could be dusty, dead people," Venus makes a gagging noise in the back of her throat.

Ryu slowly climbs up to her feet, feeling the sore spots of her legs and back that she's sure are going to be bruised in a few hours. "I told you, vampires don't exist!" she growls back angrily, "I swear, I am surrounded by a bunch of scared little chil-."

Her voice stops in her throat as she clicks on the flashlight and the beam of light highlights a form she never thought she'd see this far out in the middle of the country.

"-dren," Ryu's jaw drops and her eyes become saucers. "April!"

"Yeah, what'd you find?"

Ryu's not sure how to answer, so she swallows, "…You wouldn't….believe me if I told you. So…you're gonna have to…come see for yourself."

"Just tell us what you see!" Venus barks impatiently.

Ryu moves the flashlight beam around to get the whole view of the object before answering as best as she can, "Uh…Hell?"

"What?" they all answer.

Within a few seconds, they all creep down the stairs nervously, their eyes darting around restlessly, and they stop behind Ryu. She lifts the flashlight beam again and points it at the object in question.

Everyone gasps.

"The Kraang," Raph glares.

* * *

After standing around for what seemed like forever, Donnie and Ryu were finally shoved forward to check it out and they find a thick layer of dust over it. It had been under the house for a very long time. Donnie had the door open in seconds so now they're all crowded inside taking a look around. Ryu instantly starts poking around under the computers curiously, not passing up the opportunity to study the Kraang computers without the fear of being shot with lasers every second.

"Okay, don't touch anything," Donnie orders as he kneels down in front of a glass pod-looking container. Ryu looks up to find out what they had found and she notices the container instantly; the outline of a person sits inside. She sits up immediately to watch in interest. Donnie turns his head to glare at Mikey over his shoulder, "I repeat: Do not. Touch. ANYTHING."

Mikey backs up with a sheepish grin and knocks into the keyboard of a computer nearby. Ryu gasps and quickly rolls out from under the ones she's studying as it powers up above her.

"MIKEY!" Donnie yells as the containment pod starts to light up and open before all of them. Ryu steps up behind Raph and watches in interest as the container opens up all the way and a cloud of thick, cold, fog spills out around their legs.

"Oops," Mikey laughs weakly, "I promise not to touch anything starting…now?"

The door finishes opening and everyone stares at the grown woman inside. Her hair is pale blonde and her eyes are a light green, nothing out of the ordinary. Ryu narrows her eyes suspiciously, _So then why would the Kraang keep her frozen in there?_

"M-mom?"

Ryu jerks her eyes towards April whose voice shakes in surprise.

"Mom?!" Casey repeats, mirroring her surprise.

The woman inside starts to stir, fluttering her eyes and stumbling out of the container weakly, and nearly falls to the floor if not for Donnie and Raph being there to catch her.

"Take it easy, ma'am," Donnie gasps, taking her under the right arm while Raph goes under her left.

"Hold on," Raph adds. Ryu smiles privately at him. She was right; he really is a nice guy under all that tough exterior. The woman glances at them both back and forth, her eyes getting wider with each turn of her head, before she suddenly breaks out into a terrified scream and struggles to get away from them. They both take a hit in the stomach as she gets loose and rushes away screaming.

"Mutants!" the woman stumbles again, her legs obviously still trying to regain themselves, and she falls towards the floor again. Casey reaches out to grab her and Ryu steps up to help him get her to her feet again.

"Oh, uh, don't worry, Mrs. O'Neal, these are good mutants," Casey assures her. Mrs. O'Neal takes Ryu's offered arm, grabbing her steadily around the inside of her elbow, and stands up.

The touch burns into Ryu's arm and she jerks away in pain, hissing. Venus leans to the side to see her arm, "What the heck was that?"

Slowly the burn marks on her arm, searing red from the heat, begin to glow from the inside with that pink-purple glow and the burn is healed. Ryu rubs it gingerly, still feeling the heat coming off her skin.

Raph takes her arm gently to get a look at the area on her skin, but it's already fading. Ryu nods and they both turn to look at Mrs. O'Neal who speaks for the second time, "Where am I? And how do you know my-."

The woman turns towards April who stands like a statue across the room from her. She takes a shaky step towards the redhead, "A-April? But…but how? Just a few days ago, you were only…six years…old…"

Casey rushes forward once more to catch the woman as she passes out from shock. April reaches out towards the woman before she too passes out, Venn and Mikey catching her before she can hit the ground.

"Oh, snap," Mikey gaps.

Venn's hip bumps into a nearby computer that hasn't started up yet and it starts buzzing. "Whoops," Venn quickly pulls away from it, freezing in anticipation.

Everyone glances around warily, expecting some evil trap to go off and kill them all, but nothing happens. Ryu turns to the computer and eyes it curiously; usually a Kraang computer would be glowing with pink-purple lights, but this one doesn't.

She steps up to it, while everyone checks on April and her mother, and starts wiping the dust off the keypad, hitting a few buttons in the process. The computer stops buzzing and the screen blinks to life.

A message flashes on the screen: **Denied.**

 _What the heck does that mean_ , Ryu thinks. Suddenly, on the side panel beside the screen, a port opens and a strange, blue, rectangular disk slides out.

"That isn't Kraang tech," Venus states, standing up from her work on checking April's energy points. Everyone looks up at the computer.

"That looks like your tech," Venn agrees, grabbing Ryu's shoulder.

 _He's right_ , she takes note, _this looks just like my tech._

Ryu starts to reach for the disk to pull it out, but Venn grabs her wrist to stop her, "Hold on, do you remember what happened the last time you tried to pull a random disk out of a computer?"

His words make her pause, fingertips going cold as they hover in the air around the surface of the chip. _We could find out so much from this disk. It could give us information on the Kraang's plan, or information on their world, or details about the mutagen. Anything could be on this disk. I can't just leave it here_ , she thinks. But of course, her thoughts have to drift back off to the last time she pulled a random disk from a computer. It had set off a chain reaction through all the computers that destroyed all the hard drives before she could get anything off of them. And to top it all off, the disk had nothing on it, but a program to start that chain of destruction.

What could this disk have on it? She could pull it out and the whole ship explode or the disk could trigger a homing signal that could lead the Kraang here with a whole fleet of ships.

Ryu sighs. She isn't by herself here or otherwise she wouldn't really care. She has a whole family to think about here in this house, not just her. Taking a deep inhale, Ryu stretches out her index finger and pushes the disk back into the port where it disappears and the computer shuts down automatically.

Venus wraps her arms over both Ryu's and Venn's shoulder, "So, you try to type anything the computer spits out a random chip and doesn't allow you to do anything else. You push the chip back in and the computer shuts down and doesn't allow you to do anything else. The only option I can see in this situation is to pull that disk out…" She glances at Ryu, "Anyone else here seeing a trap?"

"You're right."

"Wha-?" Venus's eyes bulge out of her head, dropping her arms.

Ryu just shrugs, "Yeah, I said it. You're right. I can't take any risks here. That disk will just have to stay in the computer."

"Well, until we can figure out anything from this ship, let's get these two upstairs," Leo orders. Venn and Ryu help out to carry the two females up the basement stairs and into the living room. When April finally wakes up, Donnie goes to help her make tea in the kitchen for her mom who is conscious when they return.

"Here you go, mom. Just relax," April smiles, handing her mother a cup of the tea. Ryu glares at the turtles, mouthing at them to back off when they all lean around the chair to stare at the woman a bit too close and she shudders uncomfortably.

Mrs. O'Neal takes the cup from her daughter and Ryu leans against the wall nearby, "Thank you, April. I'm still a little shaky."

Ryu's eyes narrow in an instant. Something in that short sentence sets her off; the tone in the mother's voice doesn't sound quite convincing. _Why would she say it like that? Is she just that uncomfortable with the turtles? They're not that bad._

As April's mom sips her tea, Ryu studies the woman's profile carefully, finding a few of April's features in her face. After a few moments of silence, Mrs. O'Neal starts explaining how she came to be in the ice box they had found her in, about how they had experimented on April's great grandfather who was the one to discover the ship under the house and accidentally woke up the Kraang from their slumber.

When Mrs. O'Neal stands up to hug her daughter, she pulls away a second later to look around the room, "Where is Kirby anyway?"

"Kirby?" Casey stops drinking his tea to answer her with a smile, "Oh, he got turned into a wicked Kraang headed mutant-!"

Raph and Ryu reach over to smack him, spilling his drink out of his glass. "You just had to pull a 'Mikey', didn't you?" Raph growls at him under his breath.

Venn taps Ryu on the arm and motions over towards the doorway where Venus has turned away to stare blankly out the window. Something about her blank stare has Ryu worried, but then Mikey starts mumbling to his brothers under his breath in a voice too mature for his age, "Is it me, or does April's mom seem a little bit…off?"

Raph laughs, "Ha! Like you're one to talk."

"I'm serious, dude, I got those ninja vibes, yo. I don't trust her," Mikey glances suspiciously over to where April and her mother are hugging again and Ryu follows his gaze.

 _So he feels something too. Guess I'm not the only one who thinks something's up._

As Venn and Ryu head out of the room, Venus has moved to the window by the front door, a drinking glass cradled between her two hands. Venn touches her shoulder and comes around to stand beside her, "You okay?"

The girl looks up, her shoulder length hair swaying to the movement as her dull eyes gaze up at the sky, "A storm's coming. I can feel it."

Ryu swallows and looks out the window to the yard. She knows that Venus doesn't mean a literal storm, but all the same she can't help looking around for some evil slithering across the yard towards them. Venus's ruling element has always been wind, so Ryu's gotten used to these kinds of random switches in her mood.

Those ruled by the wind element could always sense when something drastic was about to happen to someone's emotional state; they're sensitive like that—paranoid.

But always right.

* * *

Later that night, when Ryu and Venus are playing cards at the table, the front door slams open and April's mom comes rushing in and vanishing up the stairs in a fit of tears. After a few loud, angry screams outside, April follows her in.

The two girls share a worried look before heading to the base of the stairs to find out what's going on. Raph, Donnie, and Leo meet them at the door just as Mikey comes in from outside, stumbling to a stop when he spots the glare his brothers are giving him.

All the turtles come barreling towards him, followed by Casey, and drag him back outside and across the yard towards the barn. Venus and Ryu go after them to find out what's up since no one is exactly talking. The barn is dark until Donnie switches on a bright spot light and angles it down on the younger turtle.

Ryu throws Venus a look; she'd already told her about the strange feeling she and Mikey had gotten towards April's mother. Venus nods before they both turn back to observe from a distance.

"Michelangelo," Donnie starts.

 _Ooo…full name_ , Ryu winces, _never a good sign._

"You…attacked…April's….MOTHER!" Donnie screams at Mikey as loud as his anger would let him and Ryu flinches. She's never really seen Donnie get this mad before.

"Mikey, have you completely cracked your shell?" Raph growls.

"I don't trust her!" Mikey shoots back defensively, "She's all kinds of wrong. You guys gotta believe me!"

Leo raises his hand to cut him off, "Oh, just like the time tiny elves stole your nun chucks and replaced them with mozzarella sticks?"

Mikey thinks about it for a second and then jabs a finger at his older brother, "Yes!"

"Or the time you and Ice Cream Kitty entered a break dancing contest?" Raph snaps.

Again Mikey thinks for a second, "Exactly!"

Venus's jaw drops as she whispers over to Ryu, "You attract the _weirdest_ people."

"Stop it, Mikey!" Casey jumps in, "Do you have any idea how much this means to April? If you ruin this for her-."

"Enough!"

Everyone turns to face Ryu's outburst; even Venus eyes her curiously. Ryu brushes her hair back over her shoulder from its loose ponytail at the back of her head and walks over to stand by Mikey and face Casey with a glare.

"If it makes any of you feel any better, I got the same feeling from her. I can't say that Mikey handled this the right way, but he's not wrong."

Casey throws his hands up into the air in frustration and then puts his face close to hers, "You're just trying to protect him!"

"So what if I am?" Ryu growls through her teeth, jamming her nose against his to meet his challenge, "What are you going to do about it, _child_?"

"Okay!" Venus quickly and calmly steps in between the two of them and brushes them apart. She then takes Mikey's hand in hers and closes her eyes to focus. Ryu crosses her arms stiffly over her chest, glaring past Venus's head at Casey who glares back, and waits for Venus to be done. She'd informed her of her suspicions about Mikey having an extra sense when they'd first arrived at the farmhouse, but until now they'd never been given a reason to check him.

Until now.

One quiet moment later, Venus opens her eyes and gazes off into the distance, still holding Mikey's hand, "Well, you were right about him being different from the rest of them."

Ryu grins cockily at Casey, reveling in her moment of triumph over the kid, and then turns to look at Venus.

The dark haired girl holds up her free hand and draws a circle in the air with her finger, "All his energy points are…rotating in reverse. It's really quite fascinating."

"Does that help anything here?" Ryu asks the whole group.

When Venus drops Mikey's hand, he stands up out of his chair in a rush, "I don't care what they think. If they don't believe me, then I'll prove it."

They all watch him leave the barn and then silence returns, no one sure of what to say. Venus finally shrugs with a carefree sigh and heads for the exit, "You know, Ryu, I don't know why on earth you'd call these people a team. They certainly don't act like one."

Ryu drops her head into her hand and rubs her temples, "Yeah." She lifts her gaze to throw a sideways look at Casey, "I know."

* * *

Ryu sits down at the table where Mikey is sulking. Ice Cream Kitty pops up from inside a bowl and hisses at her. She hisses back and the mutant lowers defiantly below the rim of the bowl. Mikey hands her a can of whipped cream with a sigh, "Thanks, Ryu."

"No need, I believe there is something wrong with April's mom but I think you handled it the wrong way. You need to have some sort of proof before you go all ninja on someone," Ryu accepts the can and sprays a few rings over the mutant cat's head who gazes up at her appreciatively, before spraying some in her own mouth for herself.

"Yeah," Mikey rubs the cat's chin and she meows, "At least you two believe me, though."

He picks a cherry from the bag next to him and drops it on the top of the whipped cream mountain on the cat's head and smiles at the mutant. Ryu watches them both interact and grins as she props her head onto her hand, "You know, seeing you two together, I wouldn't be surprised if she was your familiar, Mikey."

"Ice Cream Kitty?" Mikey lifts his head in curiosity and Ice Cream Kitty meows excitedly.

"Yeah, she found you right?"

"Well," Mikey scratches his head, "April actually brought her to the lair, remember?"

"Yeah, but that just means that fate brought her to you. And if you think about it, has any cat really taken to you this well?"

Mikey stares down at the mutant who is rubbing against his hand that sits on the side of the bowl, purring. "Not that I can remember," he answers.

Out of nowhere, Ice Cream Kitty pulls back and starts hissing at the window nearby. Ryu and Mikey glance at each other warily before going to the window to look out into the night. Even through the darkness, they can just make out April's mother sneaking out across the yard.

"What do you think, Kitty? Go after her?" Mikey calls back to his mutant friend. He and Ryu look back at the cat and she hisses louder, swiping at the air in response.

"I think that's a yes," Ryu grins.

"Let's do this!" Mikey and Ryu bump fists before slipping out the side door of the kitchen and into the darkness after her. They keep hidden behind trees and bushes as they follow behind the woman, moving quietly, and finally spot her coming to a stop farther out beside a small stream.

The moonlight leaves the skies for a second, darkening the woods around them, and as April's mom turns towards them to keep walking, they both gasp and duck down behind the rocks they've stopped beside.

"Sweet mother of mutagen!" Mikey gasps quietly.

"I take it you saw that too?" Ryu whines.

"You mean the monster face?"

"Yeah."

"I thought that was just a nightmare."

"You're awake," Ryu points out.

"Am I?"

Ryu sighs and takes him by the hand to pull him along behind her after Mrs. O'Neal. They come to stop when Mrs. O'Neal kneels down beside the stream and stretches out her arms. Ryu's eyes widen in alarm when she sees the glowing green mutagen container in the woman's hands. She covers Mikey's mouth when he starts to raise his voice to scream.

But they don't have time to sit there. The woman is starting to tip the container over, letting the goo run out thickly like molasses towards the water's surface. Ryu and Mikey share and look and tear to their feet to stop her. Mikey throws his chain forward so that it twists around the mutagen container and then jerks it away from the water before it can contaminate it. They take a stance, ready to fight.

"You foolish welp!" the woman turns on them.

"Don't try flattering me!" Mikey growls.

"That was an insult," Ryu states.

"Oh."

"You shouldn't have done that, Michelangelo," Mrs. O'Neal warns, stepping towards them as she pulls a pair of scissors out from behind her back, "Now you've made mother very angry!"

"I knew there was something wrong about you," Mikey shouts, "You're with the Kraang!"

"Yes, I will capture April O'Neal and take her to my masters!" Mrs. O'Neal smiles darkly. She pulls her arm back and swings the blades down at Mikey's head.

"And that's all I need to hear," Ryu pushes her power out and grabs hold of the scissors, ripping them out of the woman's hand and they fly off into a tree.

"Well, Mom," Mikey spits out sarcastically, "Things are about to get a lot worse!"

He rushes at her, baring the blade in the end of his nun chucks, but Mrs. O'Neal dodges him way too easily. Ryu pulls up the earth around her feet, but Mrs. O'Neal jumps and flips away from it in a flash. Mikey goes at her again. She grabs the back of his shell, spins him around and throws him against a tree a few yards away.

Ryu gasps and rushes to his side, "Come on, get up!"

Mikey groans, rubbing his head, "Ugh, mom's a lot tougher than I thought."

As she helps him to his feet, they turn around a second later to find April's Mom standing directly behind them, making them jump back in surprise. The root of the tree trips them both and they stumble back onto the ground again.

"What are you really?" Mikey demands.

April's mother grins sinisterly and her hands start bending and crackling in a way that isn't human. Ryu backs up against the tree, her stomach churning sickeningly. Right before their eyes, the woman's human form starts peeling away, shifting, transforming into something else entirely, each change making Mikey and Ryu that much more sick to their stomachs.

"Mikey," she whines.

"Y-yeah?"

"I know I said I would stop running away, but at a time like this…" Ryu trails off.

"Agreed," Mikey whimpers.

"RUN!" they both cry.

They barely get a few yards through the trees before something screeches and snakes through the air after them. It snags Mikey around the legs, forcing him to face plant in the dirt. Ryu stops to grab his arms quickly, pulling him back as he starts getting dragged back the way they had come from.

The monster behind them, hidden in the darkness so that only those pink-purple glowing eyes can be seen, roars at them and pulls Mikey's legs harder and harder until Ryu is sure he's going to slip out of her fingers.

"Ryu, I don't know much about science, but I'm pretty sure I can't get any taller than this!" Mikey cries.

"I know! And that's Anatomy not science!" Ryu grunts. She twists her ankles back and forth, digging her heels into the ground that responds to her call by solidifying into stone to aid her. The monster pulls harder and the stone around her ankles cracks and splinters. "You've got to be kidding me!" Ryu gasps, looking down at the stone breaking away around her feet.

Ryu loses her balance and falls over onto her stomach, her grip slips on Mikey and he's carried away into the darkness. _Oh, my gosh! Mikey!_

A dark voice echoes through the trees around her with a laugh, "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide."

Ryu jumps to her feet and races back towards the house. She's going to need backup against this thing!

Again the voice calls after her, "Keep running, keep running. You will eventually meet your doom, Mina."

 _What?!_ A shiver runs down Ryu's spine.

* * *

She skids to a stop just inside the tree line and ducks behind a thick hedge of bushes. April's mom, back in her normal form, is strolling across the yard towards the house as Venn and Venus are coming out. They wave to her politely, but the woman ignores them as she pauses on the porch to stare out at the trees. They both shrug and continue on their walk to the van.

Ryu's breath is sharp, hot against the inside of her mouth, as she watches her friends climb into the van, _I can't move! If I try to go to them, that beast will pick us all up before I can warn them. Dang it!_

As soon as the van leaves, April's mom disappears into the house beyond, closing the door behind her. For a long moment, Ryu just stands there in the darkness, afraid to move, but she finally deems it safe to move towards the house and slink along the side of the building to the side door. She ducks down outside it and peeks in through the window inside. The kitchen is dark, void of life; the sight drops a cold stone into her stomach.

She turns the knob slowly, keeping her noise to a minimum, and opens the door with a quiet _creek_ sound that scares off a tiny mouse back under the refrigerator. Ryu closes the door carefully, moves along the edge of the dark room in silence, and stops at the side of the doorframe to calm her breathing. The lights above the front door are on, casting a small glow into the dark kitchen, but not enough to reveal her to anyone who might come in. She moves a bit to glance around the doorframe; the trap door to the downstairs is open.

Footsteps are stomping up the steps, forcing Ryu to duck back inside the kitchen as a shadow moves across the small space of light stretching into the room.

"Hey, red, you okay?" Casey asks, his shadow joining the other.

April sighs, "Yeah I just…I'm going out for some air."

"I'll go too."

"Cool, we can see if we can find my mom."

"Still haven't found her?" Casey asks as they move out the door. Leo's shadow comes into the light a second later along with Raph's.

"They can't find her?" Raph asks.

"Yeah, and I don't know why," Leo grumbles.

"What makes you say that?"

"I could've sworn I saw her go down stairs."

Raph shrugs and heads back out of the light, "Well, I haven't seen her. Maybe April missed her on her way down."

"I'll go check with Donnie."

Both of the shadows move from the light and Ryu looks out. The space is clear. _Move, Ryu! Move!_ She slips out of the kitchen and moves past the trap door carefully towards the living room.

"Raph!"

Raph turns on the couch as she comes sliding around the corner of the couch and ducks down by his knees, "What's up with you?"

She grabs his arm and pulls him down to the floor with her. "You have to listen to me! She got Mikey! She's not real-!"

"Ryu!" Raph grabs her shoulders and stops her panicked rant, "Calm down. What are you talking about?"

Ryu closes her eyes and focuses her breathing, feeling her pulse and heart rate react almost instantly. When she opens her eyes again, she finds his hand pressed to her forehead. Grabbing it sternly, she meets his fiery green eyes, "April's mom isn't her mom. She's some sort of monster! She's not real. Mikey and I followed her out into the woods and saw her dropping mutagen and we tried to stop her but she attacked us. She got Mikey!"

Raph's eyes widen in disbelief.

"Please believe me!" she pleads, closing her eyes and drawing his hand to her chest above her heart.

He opens his mouth to answer her, but a scream tears through the house from downstairs. They both jump to their feet, both recognizing that voice.

"Leo," they breathe in union. Taking off they head to the front door and stop at the top of the stairs leading down the trap door. Below, barely seen through the darkness, Leo is struggling to crawl up the stairs, his crutch nowhere to be found to help him.

They take the steps two at a time down to him and pull him to his feet so that they can move him to an old chair nearby. "Bro, you okay?" Raph asks.

"I…I think so," Leo breathes heavily as Ryu takes a defensive stance in front of him to gaze around the room.

"What happened?"

"Mikey was right," Leo answers, "April's mom really is a creature."

"What?!" Raph takes a stance beside Ryu, spinning his sai in his hands.

"Where is it?" Ryu demands.

"Here."

Ryu and Raph turn stone cold at the dark change in Leo's voice. Ryu's breath hitches in her throat, heart beat returning to the race it had been running in the woods, but she turns towards Leo anyway. They both rush at Leo, ignoring the fact that his arms have turned to long, pink tentacles, joining four others that spear out of the back of his shell, but Leo stops both other their attacks. One tentacle wraps around Ryu's fist while another entangles Raph's sai. They're both lifted easily into the air and tossed back across the room where they tumble over the top of the Kraang ship and then fall to the dirt behind it.

Ryu sits up, coughing out gravel, and Raph grabs her shoulder, "You okay?"

Ryu grinds her teeth, the beating on her body raising her anger and stirring her power. She grabs her forehead, her fingers lifting her bangs from her face over her blind eye and leaving her other eye exposed.

"Ryu?"

"No," she growls under her breath, "I'm not."

Raph blinks as her eyes comes open and he finds the edges glowing, that illumination clawing towards the center of her pupils. This close, he's discovers a small, pin point white glow deep in the center of her pupil; something he hadn't seen the last time she'd transformed in front of him.

From above, Ryu can sense the next attack coming and she quickly pulls up a dome of earth over them as it hits. The dome trembles from the impact, barely having any time to truly strengthen itself before the attack hits, but Ryu holds it up with a grunt.

Raph stands up and pulls out a smoke bomb, "Let it down Ryu or you'll lose control again. I got this."

"A smoke bomb?" she asks through her teeth, wincing as another attack from the Leo double slams into the top of the earth dome. A crack splinters it.

Raph growls under his breath, but keeps his comment to himself as he wraps his arm around Ryu's waist, drawing her close to him, and the earth dome falls from the lack of her power supplying it.

The Leo-double lands in front of them, blocking their escape route and screaming that devil scream, but Raph just tighten his hold around her and snaps the smoke bomb on the ground at his feet. The cloud swallows them up and they vanish.

Outside where Casey and April sit together on the swing, the yard is quiet and calm as the crickets start coming alive around them. It's not until the front door bursts open that everything is thrown into chaos.

Raph comes barreling across the yard with Ryu on his back.

"Raph?" April jumps up, "What happened?"

He sets Ryu down on her feet and the silver-haired girl collapses on the nearby stump to rest and get her breathing back under her control. She can faintly feel April touch her shoulders, place her hand on Ryu's forehead, even shake her arms a bit to get her attention, but Ryu's head is pounding too hard for her to focus on anything.

"April," Raph says from his place kneeled down by Ryu's side, "It was you mom."

"What?" April jerks up straight, "What are you talking about?"

"Your mom…she's…" Raph trails off, not sure how to explain, "Your mom isn't human, April. She attacked the others. She's some kind of monster."

"Not you too, Raph!" Casey argues.

"I don't believe you!" April snaps.

"April!"

They all look up as the woman in question steps out the front door and onto the porch with a stern look on her face. "I told you to pack your bags. We're leaving," Mrs. O'Neal orders as she comes towards them.

Raph takes a stance in front of them all and flips his sai out threateningly, "Stay back…mom…thing!"

"Raph, stop it!" April pushes him to the side as she goes to her mother, "Mom please tell me what's going on-."

Her mother grabs her arm sharply, "Enough of this, go pack your bags now!"

April pulls at the woman's arm, suddenly seeing her mother as some stranger, "Mom, that hurts. Stop, please! Why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm your MOTHER!" she turns on April, her face deformed as it had been out in the woods and she screams out in an alien voice.

April shrieks in alarm, trying desperately to pull away from the creature. Raph and Casey run to her aid but before they can attack, the earth splits open and a spike half the height of the house rips up and cuts off the creature's tentacle that holds April hostage. April stumbles back and the boys catch her before they all turn to look back over their shoulders.

Ryu must've lost control.

The creature starts shaking and crackling as the whole body shifts and changes, growing into a huge spider-like monster with a long neck half that's half the size of the house. It lowers its head and screeches at Ryu's transformed image.

Ryu's eyes fly open, fully glowing that pink-purple radiance, and she screams that unearthly howl that shatters the air around them. Raph, Casey, and April grab their ears against the noise as they duck behind the swing out of sight; Leo had warned them that she reacts to movement in this form.

The beast sends a tentacle flying at her but Ryu vanishes and comes to a blurred stop behind it. She raises her arm and, to everyone's surprise, it starts to shift too. Her fingers mold together in a glowing mass of light and then her arm extends about double its former length to materialize into a long, lethal looking blade.

Raph releases a breath in confusion. Had she been able to shift like this before? How much more is she not able to control?

The creature moves again and so does Ryu. She becomes a blur again and strikes hard at the creature's right, slicing off two of its legs in a flash and they fall to the ground. The beast cries out in pain and Ryu shrieks back in that eerie voice of hers.

Behind the swing, April lowers to the ground and pulls out her phone, punching in her speed dial. The voice that answers is flat and annoyed, "Yeah."

"We need you back here now!"

Venus pauses on the other end of the line, "I forgot my wallet so we were already heading back anyway. What's up?"

"Ryu is what's up! My mother isn't my mother, she some sort of Kraang mutation!"

Venus hangs up quickly but not before April hears one last sentence from her before the call ends, "Hit the gas!"

Something hits the swing and sends all three of them flying back into the grass. Raph jumps up and tries to locate Ryu again, but she's become a blur again as she strikes at the beast over and over. The beast cries out again and again as pieces of it are sliced off like pieces of bread.

Nearby at the side of the house, there is the sound of squealing tires and doors slamming shut across the yard and then suddenly things take a strange turn. Something lands in front of Raph, Casey, and April, forcing them to their bellies on the ground as the figure yells at them.

"Cover your ears!"

They don't have the chance to ask questions before a loud siren-like shriek fills the air, louder than anything any of them have ever heard. Their ears ring in complaint from the noise attacking them, the ground rumbles as if an earthquake tears through it, and all other noises are drowned out under it.

The sound slowly fades to a deafening ringing after a few long, agonizing minutes, and Raph opens his eyes; even his vision is knocked off balance. That's when he realizes that the ringing noise is coming from his own ears and he starts fearing that he's gone deaf for good.

The arm holding him to the ground lifts off and he sits up slowly, his head spinning like a top.

"You all okay?" a voice asks.

Raph looks up, glad to know he can still hear, no matter how faint it is, and spots Venn reaching down to help them all up.

"Don't worry, the ringing will go away," Venn explains to April who is still holding her ears. He abruptly turns away from them as if he's called and he runs around the swing set, leaving them there to themselves.

Raph moves to follow him, a bit slower on his unstable legs, and Casey and April follow behind him. They all find the beast gone, evaporated to goo on the ground, and Leo, Donnie, and Mikey all sitting up in the center of the slime slowly.

Raph is glad to see his brothers okay, but his eyes are too busy zeroing in on Venn and Venus to focus too heavily on them. Venn has a gun draw, aimed at Ryu's head. Venus has a long dagger drawn from somewhere off her person to bare it at Ryu's throat.

Raph goes to their sides warily, staring down at Ryu who is covered in the same slime and starting to stir herself. She sits up and pauses the second she spots the tip of Venus's blade at her head.

"Show me your eyes," Venus orders.

Ryu looks up. Her eyes are back to normal, letting them all relax, but Raph can see the exhaustion behind them, making the blue and amber even duller than normal. She coughs and pulls a slap of goo off of the side of her face with a wince as she turns over to sit on her butt.

"Who did I hurt?" Ryu asks.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all advice and comments are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	7. Chapter 6: 3-3(Part 2) Ryu

**Annnnd...yes, this is late. That's why I'm uploading two chapters to make up for it. Enjoy! The last part of the chapter was based off an actual conversation Ravyne and I had...Doritos...Hahaha!**

 **Again, all advice and critiques are welcome!**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **6**

 **3-3.2: "Ryu"**

"So when I downloaded the data from the Kraang ship, I discovered the creature wasn't really April's mom, it just had her memories," Donnie explains as he types away on his computer inside the Kraang ship.

"So what was it?" Raph asks.

"Some sort of early infiltration experiment that utilized a combination of Mrs. O'Neal's DNA and Kraang DNA, but it was too dangerous."

"So the Kraang put it in a deep freeze," Raph finishes, "It all makes sense."

"Guys," Leo stops them both, grabbing their shoulders, "Do we have to talk about this right now?" He glances off at April who sits curled up next to the wall in deep thought by herself. The turtles nod in understanding and move to stand near her.

Over by the door, Venus is watching Ryu poke around on her mini-screen handheld that is hooked up to a metal contraption around her forearm just below her elbow. The metal band blinks with different colored lights as it reads her blood readings and sends the data to her handheld which displays the findings on the screens.

"Nothing so far," Ryu tells Venn who watches her carefully in his place leaning on the other side of the doorframe.

"Well, that ends that then," he sighs in defeat.

"So then, what set you off?" Venus asks, "And how on earth did you mold your arms into _blades_? Since when could you even _do_ that?"

Ryu shrugs, rubbing her forehead again. She never remembers what goes down when she changes. Personally, she doesn't really care to know. All she cares about is whether or not she hurts anybody. That would actually bother her.

"I don't know nor do I care. I'll send a message to the elders about it tomorrow morning when things settle down. As of right now, I just want to go to bed," Ryu pushes herself off the doorframe, listening to the dead sound the metal makes, and heads back upstairs. She rolls her bedding out on the floor and slides under her blankets without bothering to pull her hair up into the braid she normally wears at night.

Before long, everyone is wondering off to bed, settling the house back into a calm silence around them. The night's events had left everyone exhausted to the core, but Ryu and April had really been the ones affected.

Ryu, though, didn't have the heart to tell anyone. She just couldn't find the right words.

Knowing that she had hurt that beast, even if the thing was evil and a complete fake, April had still seen it as her mom. Ryu had destroyed that; she had brought this pain on the girl.

Just as the fire had brought this pain on Ryu so long ago.

Now, she had become that fire.

And she can't stand it.

Sleep doesn't come to her at all that night; eventually she sneaks out of the room around Venus and Venn who are both snoring soundly in the room with her and out the front door to sit on the porch. She sits there in thought for so long that she loses track of time.

That is, until the roosters crow in the coming dawn.

She looks up and finds the sun beginning to lighten the sky above. Right about now, she would be getting up to go out for her morning run, but now she just can't find the energy. A deep fatigue has settled into her bones ever since she came out of her change last night, a fatigue that she's never known before whenever she came out of a transformation.

 _Could this be what the Dragons warned me about?_ , Ryu wonders. _Whatever, I've taken this mission and I will finish it. No matter the consequences._

She reaches down into her boot and feels around for her intended target; a small test tube-like container filled with a deep, dark purple liquid. The cork comes out with a small _pop_ and she downs the sour liquid in one gulp.

 _One down_ , she chants to herself, _nine to go._

Immediately, the fatigue tainting her body evaporates into nothing, as if it had not even been there to begin with, and Ryu smiles. Above her, dark clouds are beginning to roll in, threatening a storm on their area. In the air, she can faintly smell the approaching rain.

"Ryu?"

April sits down next to her as she jumps at the sudden voice; she hadn't even heard the front door open. "Wow, you scared me," Ryu laughs.

"Sorry," April shrugs, "Training to be a ninja remember?"

"Right, yeah, I remember now. How's that going?"

April rolls her eyes, "Well the turtles don't make it easy."

Ryu chuckles, dropping her head on her knees.

"Hey, don't laugh at me!"

Ryu chokes her amusement down to a snicker and presses her lips together, but April still glares at her, "What, I'm trying right?!"

April groans and they go silent as they look up at the darkening skies above. The wind is already starting to change from a graceful, gentle dance to a playful tumble in the yard, the grass swaying helplessly against it.

"Hey…can I…ask you a question?" April asks after a long pause.

Ryu turns her head to the side and raises her eyebrows curiously. Since when had the girl ever asked for permission to ask a question?

The redhead drops her eyes to her feet before she continues, "That night, when you had told me that story…about your friend…the one who lost her family in the fire…?"

Ryu eyes quickly become guarded as she shifts her gaze out across the yard and focuses on her breathing, blocking out the press of memories that try to break out from their cage in her mind.

April glances over at the other girl carefully, not really sure she wants to continue now that Ryu has that look on her face, but she just has to know, "That girl…she's you…isn't she?"

Ryu's throat goes completely dry, tightening up like a noose has pulled stiff around her neck. She swallows it and goes to stand on her feet, "You know, I think this is a story the whole family deserves to hear."

"No, I didn't mean you had to tell everyone!" April waves her hands in panic.

"It's okay," Ryu smiles weakly, "I want to."

Back inside, Ryu calls everyone to the living room and she goes to lean against the wall next to the window. Beside her in chair next to the couch, Venus pops her butterscotch lollipop out of her mouth, "So why am I wasting my time in here when I should be outside?"

"Doing what, lounging around?" Ryu raises an eyebrow at her.

"Stop it," Venn groans as he takes a seat on the floor beside Venus, "Why do you both have to constantly go at each other's throats?"

When Mikey and Donnie finally take a seat on the floor on the other side of the room from them, Ryu sighs, "Well, I know you're all wondering why I called you in here."

"Cliché," Venus mutters behind her magazine, earning her a glare from everyone.

April, standing behind the couch where Leo, Raph, and Casey are settled, nods to Ryu encouragingly.

"I told April a story a while ago and I feel like it's only fair that you should all know about it."

Venn and Venus both share a look and Venus sets down her magazine on her lap, "Is this what I think this is?"

Ryu nods.

"I think I'll go to the kitchen-."

"Sit," Venn demands through his teeth.

Venus drops back into the seat and crosses her hands in her lap immediately.

"What is she talking about?" Raph urges.

"Yeah, you can trust us," Leo adds.

"I do trust you! That's why I want you all to know…I just don't know how to start," Ryu fiddles her fingers in front of her, staring down at them.

"Start at the beginning," Raph suggests.

"Yeah, just pretend you're telling me all over again," April smiles again.

Ryu leans back against the wall and starts fiddling her fingers again, "When I was really small, me and my family often went on vacation to a small lodge my father had gotten for my mother. It was always exciting to go and just get away from all the stress, but as I got older things got a bit harder between us. I had a younger sister, she was two years younger than me, but she was born a little too early. The doctors said that she would always get sick easily and as she got older it just got worse. It wasn't until I was six that it really started to bug me because my mom was always having to stay at home to take care of her, but on some good days we'd get a chance to take her with us to the lodge. It was on one of these lucky weekends when I was seven that things went very wrong."

Ryu's voice pauses as she turns to gaze out the window for a moment, "Me and my sister had just been finishing our prayers when the phone rang. My mother was in the room with us, singing us to sleep, but we could hear my father start to raise his voice. He never raised his voice, so we were all pretty surprised to hear it. My sister started to cry and my mother had to go calm her down, but I remember getting up to go to my father. I had just come into the living room when he was slamming the phone down on the receiver; his expression scared me. Whoever had been on the phone apparently said something to make him mad but he would never tell me that night. Instead, he just kneeled down in front of me to apologize and said that sometimes we make mistakes but we can't let them define our future. I never understood what he meant. He brought me to bed where my mother had finally gotten my sister to sleep, and they both sat down on my bedside to tell me that I would have to become really strong so that I could take care of my sister."

She stops again and swallows the emotions that have swelled up in her throat, hating the words sitting on her tongue, "I didn't want to. I told them right then and there that I didn't want to take care of my sister—that she could take care herself. I told them I didn't like her because she was always taking up everyone's time together." Ryu sighs heavily and chokes out a weak laugh, "Great thing to say to your family before they die, right?"

"Ryu-."

"Don't try to tell me that I didn't know any better," Ryu stops April, "I did know better. I knew that I was jealous of my sister. I knew that I hated her. What I didn't know was that she'd die in that fire. I didn't know that I wouldn't have the time to tell her that I hated her."

No one answers, uncertain of what to say. Raph glances up at Ryu, seeing a strange person behind her eyes; someone older and way more tired that her outer self lets on. It's when she starts talking again that that other person she buries inside of her comes pouring out.

"It was a few hours later, after everyone had gone to sleep, that the fire happened. My parents woke me up and told me to get outside, but I wouldn't go. I was too afraid to move; the heat from the fire was excruciating. All I could hear over the flames was my mother screaming that she couldn't wake my sister, that she had to get her out. She tried to tell me so many times to get out, to run, but I kept crying that I couldn't do it. My father eventually was forced to pick me up and carry me outside to the big oak tree that sat out in the yard before he went back in to get my mother and sister," Ryu squeezes her eyes shut and her words choke in the back of her throat. "They never came out. I just sat there and watched them die and I didn't do anything!"

"Ryu, you were only seven, you couldn't do anything," April tells her, her own voice trembling.

"Everyone says that!" Ryu snaps. "They all told me that I was just a child, that I couldn't have done anything. I could've gotten up, stopped sitting there like a coward, and gone to get them. I could have, but I just sat there! I just sat there!"

In a flash, Raph react before his thoughts can catch up with him, rushing to her side the second he sees her knees start to buckle, and wrapping her up in his arms. Ryu goes weak, burying her face into the side of his neck and biting her tongue to keep herself from breaking down. Venus glances at Venn who stands up to put a hand on the back of Ryu's shoulder. Donnie and Mikey both jump up to go wrap them up in hugs too, followed by Leo, and April who do the same.

Venus and Casey both remain seated, staring at the group with matched expressions. "Sorry," she calls to the hugging group, "I don't do hugs…but I sent you my condolences years ago, Ryu. Still do. You remember, right?"

Ryu chuckles weakly from the center of the group, "You made me a plate of burritos."

The whole group steps away to throw weird looks at Venus who shrugs, "You said you liked burritos!"

"I said Doritos."

Everyone bursts out laughing, filling the house with the merriment and chasing out the fog that had started to build up around them.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all advice and comments are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	8. Chapter 7: 3-4 The Croaking

**So here's the next chapter. I hope this makes up for missing this past Sunday's upload. If not, I hope a promise that I will be posting up this Sunday even though I did a double upload tonight will be a good enough bribe.**

 **Again, all advice and critiques are welcome!**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **7**

 **3-4: "The Croaking"**

"Focus or I'm going to smack your hands clean off," Ryu warns.

Raph scoffs as he blocks her attack again, the two branches smacking together with a loud _clack_ , "Whatever-! OW!"

Ryu bites back a smile as she backs up two steps after tapping his knuckles when he left them clear open for attack. A snicker escapes the back of her throat against her will and he jerks his eyes up to glare at her. Ryu grins sheepishly, "Sorry?"

"Yeah, right!" Raph swings his branch and she dodges, smiling as the training continues for another ten minutes before April steps out the front door.

"Hey, guys, we're going to the store to get out of the house for a little while. Want to come?"

"Yes, please, stop. You're getting on my nerves," Venus gripes from behind her as she walks past the door to go into the kitchen.

Raph and Ryu pause mid step and turn towards her, "Sure."

Ryu hurries upstairs to quickly take a brief shower and changing into some comfortable jeans and a green cotton t-shirt that forms to her body. She takes the time to brush her hair and teeth out before wrapping her silver-white hair up into a loose pony-tail on her shoulder as she heads down the stairs.

"This is the third time you've messed the place up in a week!" Leo yells.

Ryu pauses on the top of the bottom section of the stairs to glance over at the living room. Everyone besides Venn and Venus are standing in the entrance way glaring at little Mikey beyond; just barely Ryu can see areas that have been trashed.

"Clean up NOW!" Raph shouts as he shoves a mop into the younger turtle's hands. "And as for you," he continues, jabbing a finger down at Ice Cream Kitty who hisses up at him from Mikey's feet, throwing drops of melted ice cream into his face, he picks her up and storms off into the kitchen, "And stay there!"

Ryu can hear him slam the freezer door sharply and she winces, feeling sorry for the poor tiny mutant. Everyone steps out into the main room by the stairs as she comes down to join them and Mikey hugs the mop guiltily to his chest.

"It better be spotless by the time we get back!" Raph demands before stomping out the front door. Everybody follows him out, Ryu and April the last in the group. "Some ninja, you're just a big screw up!"

Ryu winces again at Raph's harsh words before glaring out after him. April turns back to smile sheepishly at Mikey before closing the door to the house, "You're not going to say anything?"

April looks up at Ryu who crosses her arms angrily, "Huh?"

"To Raph! This is your house, you know? You do have say as to how Raph can act while he's here," Ryu snaps as she jerks open the sliding back door to Venn's van and sits down in the seat next to the guys in question. Venus glances back at her from the driver's seat as April and Casey slide into the front seat.

"What's wrong with you?" Raph asks Ryu as she slides down in her seat to glare out the window.

"Don't talk to me," she spits out through clenched teeth across Venn, glaring out at the tree line so that she doesn't have to face him.

"What'd I do?!"

"You-!"

"Shut up!" Venus cuts them off, "I am not going to drive with five year olds bickering in the back seat! Zip it!"

Ryu sinks farther down into her seat, glaring out her window as they pull out of the drive. Between them, Venn glances warily at both of them and regrets not taking up Donnie's offer to sit in the back with them. As they pull out onto the road, Venus turns on the radio and country music swings out of the speakers and she growls.

"No good music out here in the middle of butt-ugly nowhere," Venus gripes.

"Could be worse," Venn tells her.

Venus scoffs but doesn't respond. A little while later, Venn heads into the small store with April and Casey while everyone else waits out in the car; the silence becoming thicker and thicker with awkwardness.

When the air becomes so dense that it starts to physically weigh on Ryu's tongue sourly, she sighs in annoyance. Venus glances back at her through the rear-view mirror, raising a curious eyebrow, "What's up with all your noise?"

Ryu shuts her eyes and chews on the side of her mouth to keep from bursting at the seams. What she'd give to punch a tree right now.

"Wow," Venus chuckles as she resituates the magazine in her hands, "Drama."

"Shut up," Ryu growls, "Drama's your thing, ain't it?"

"First off, 'ain't'… _ain't_ a word, and secondly, I don't like child drama. That's just annoying and predictable; something that usually starts at the beginning of a relationship."

Ryu starts, "Excuse me?!"

Venus scoffs, throwing the girl a look via the mirror again, but doesn't answer. When she does, a few, long moments later, she holds up a deck of cards, "Want to continue where we left off?"

Ryu glances up at the cards and smiles, "Yeah, sure."

"I don't even remember where we stopped last time."

"I believe it was nine to three."

"Oh, BS!" Venus snaps.

Ryu breaks out into hysteria, dropping her forehead onto the back of the seat in front of her.

"You know, for you two to supposedly 'hate' each other, you really do get along," Leo chuckles from the back seat.

Venus and Ryu's expression become blank as they turn to eye him. "You're kidding me, right?" Ryu responds.

"'Getting along' and simply 'knowing someone' are two different things," Venus adds as she fans her cards out between her hands. "Alright, my turn."

"Hold up," Ryu gasps, "Winner always goes first."

Venus glares at her, "Yeah, we get along so well." Her sarcastic remark has everyone chuckling, even Raph, and effectively relieving the built up tension. A few moments later, the front door to the shop opens and the others return to the van, Vann climbing over Ryu's knees to return to his spot between her and Raph.

It's not until that second that she suddenly feels the distance between them. Before, the tension, her anger, had blocked that from her mind. Now, it feels like a physical wound in her side. She chews on her bottom lip as she leans her head against the cool glass of the window, gazing out at the country land as they drive past it. Even in the moving vehicle, she can faintly hear the earth's song whispering out to her, a welcome distraction to the thorn piercing into her rib cage like an annoying rash that won't go away. Ryu closes her eyes, lets her power reach out to that song, lets the melody become louder and louder as it threads into her blood and beats in time with her heart. Slowly, she sinks into the lullaby; it hums to her and the world around her vanishes.

"Ryu!"

She jolts straight up in her seat, shocked out of the silent state she has slipped into, and looks around. Venn is poking her in the shoulder, one hand resting on the open door beside her. They've returned back to the house. "We're back already?"

"Yeah," Venn eyes her worriedly, "I've never seen you dug in that deep. We went over some serious bumps in the road, no thanks to Venus's reckless driving,"

"HEY!"

"But you didn't even budge an inch," he finishes. "Were you asleep or something?"

Ryu sits up straighter, turning her legs so that they hang out of the door, and rubs her eyes. "Yeah," she smiles, "Sleeping."

Venn nods, "Okay, well, help the others bring the groceries inside."

As he walks away, Ryu drops her hands into her lap and stares down at her palms. What had happened? She goes into a lot of meditations, but this one had been different. It's like the earth's song had been trying to drag her away; trying to take her somewhere out of her body.

 _That's in no way normal_ , she thinks, _Going to have to keep an eye on that and write it down in the report to the guardians._

"Hey."

Again, Ryu starts, nearly falling out of her seat, "Geez, make a noise or something before you sneak up on a girl like that! I'm fragile here."

He scoffs as he hangs the grocery bag off over his left shoulder, "You? Fragile?"

Ryu glares at him and crosses her arms, "Yeah."

Raph shakes his head with a cocky grin, "No way do I believe that. All the evidence says otherwise. You constantly go looking for trouble, you're way too stubborn for a girl, and you like to pick fights."

"Don't forget: I also put up with you," Ryu adds with a smile. They both chuckle at that, but it quickly turns strained and trail off. Their eyes drop to the ground.

"Look, I-."

"Would you-?"

They both stop abruptly, staring at each other.

"Sorry," Ryu scratches her head, "You first."

"N-no, you go ahead."

"No, really!"

"Ladies first."

Ryu blinks in surprise. Since when does he have a lick of chivalry in him? This is odd for him, "O-okay, um….I wanted to…apologize for…being rude…"

"Uh…well, yeah," Raph replies, shuffling his feet, "I didn't understand why you were so mad at me all of a sudden."

Ryu sighs, digging her nails into the sides of the cushioned car seat. "I was…mad at how you yelled at your brother."

"Who, Mikey? He deserved it."

Her fingers dig deeper, her anger stirring, "No, Raph, he didn't. So what if he messes up. So what if he's not as serious as the rest of you. So what if he's a little goofy. Does it matter? Does it really give you the right to talk down to him and make him feel bad about himself? You can't do that. I can understand disciplining him about the mess and all, but that last comment about him sucking as a ninja took it too far. And then to leave the way you did? That could've been the last thing you said to him; something could happen to either one of you in an instant and that would be the last thing said between you two."

"Mikey knows I didn't mean it," Raph argues, crossing his arms.

"Did he?!" Ryu snaps, hating the sight of his ego rising again. His expression is defiant, prideful.

 _Just like mine had surely been_ , she thinks. Ryu sighs, releasing her anger. When she speaks again, her voice has steadied, calmed, "Raph, the last thing I said to either of my parents was that I basically hated my sister and that I hated that she took them away from me. I have to live with that for the rest of my life. I have to carry that. I have to relive the fact that I never got to tell them that I loved them."

She lifts her eyes from the ground, feeling the tears building up behind them, but somehow finds the energy to pull out a weak smile, "Don't make my same mistake, Raph. Please. I don't want to see you have to carry something like this. It hurts more than you know."

Raph opens his mouth to say something, seeing the tears building up behind her heterochromia eyes, but Leo's voice stops them, "Guys, come quick! Mikey's gone!"

* * *

"I can't believe this!"

Ryu flinches at Raph angry shout again; even from the kitchen she can feel his rage from where everyone is gathered in the living room. She sighs heavily, wishing more than anything that Raph would get his anger under control. It can be very destructive not only to himself but to those around him as well.

She pops open the fridge and Ice Cream Kitty hisses at her, threateningly. Ryu holds up her hands in defeat, "Whoa, kitty! I'm on your side. I need to know where Mikey is. Can you give me a hint?"

The small mutant just hisses and turns away from her.

"Ugh!" Ryu slams the door shut, the cold air shutting off from her face, "Useless."

"What are you grumbling about now?"

Ryu turns to find Venn and April stepping into the room with question marks on their face and she jabs a finger at the freezer door, "That stupid cat is being more stubborn than Raph. I'm trying to help her here and she just keeps hissing at me. She's never liked me, I swear!"

"Ryu!"

"What?!"

Venn grabs her shoulders and shakes her gently, "Relax! Geez, I can definitely see why you and the red one get along so well."

April muffles a scoff behind her hand. Ryu throws a glare at the girl; lately she's been getting on her nerves and she can't really pin point why. "Look," Ryu sighs, "All I'm saying is that as Mikey's familiar, Kitty should be trying to help us find him."

"Familiar?" Venn raises an eyebrow and Ryu just nods. "Huh, never thought about that before. Makes a whole lot of sense. I'll try talking to her. You go calm down your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend!" Ryu exclaims.

The whole house goes eerily quiet all of a sudden and she turns to look over her shoulder slowly. Everyone is standing piled in the door way, gazing at her with either looks of amusement, barely contained fits of laughter, or, in Raph's case, gazes of blank shock.

"Wow, Raph, barely into the relationship and already she's turning you down," Casey nudges Raph's shoulder with a tease.

"Shut up!" Raph raises a sai at the taller guy but Leo quickly steps in between the two before a fight can break out.

Ryu claps her hands down over both her ears and shakes her head, "Weirdos. I'm surrounded by weirdos. I'm going to look for Mikey elsewhere; maybe he went to walk in the woods or do some chores outside somewhere."

"Okay, but-," Venn's sentence is cut short as Ryu slams the side door to the house shut on his words, "And never mind."

Out in the woods, Ryu kicks a small stone out of her path angrily, listening to the earth's song ring out from the small element. It reaches out to her, brushing against her power curiously, but she pushes it away. Right now all she wants is quiet away from everything. She'd been worried that the argument that morning would lead to something like this, but she never actually imagined that Mikey would _run away_.

 _He couldn't have_ , Ryu thinks. On her waist, her radio starts spitting out a static noise and she snaps it off the clip on her belt, "What?"

"What part of the woods are you searching?" Venus's negative, monotone, bored voice comes blaring out the speaker in response.

"To the east of the house," Ryu rolls her eyes.

"Good."

Ryu blinks in surprise, void of words, "Excuse me?"

There's more static and then Venn's peace-maker voice comes through apologetically, "Ignore her, we're going to take the west."

"Fine," she releases the side button and pops the radio back onto her belt clip with a sigh. Around her a gentle breeze picks up and rustles a few loose strands of her hair and caressing her face. The leaves above in the trees dance around and whisper like little paper chimes in the canopy and Ryu turns her head up to look at them. These trees are tall, but they're nothing like the trees back home. Though few they are, at the foot of the mountains they are like enormous, wise towers that guard the outskirts of her home. These have the same feel to them, but she can tell by their thin trunks that they aren't as old as the ones she's come to know and love.

A small smile touches her lips. Lately, though, she's become accustomed to buildings and noisy streets too. Closing her eyes, she breathes in the night air as she looks back over her memories with her new family.

Leo, Donnie, Mikey. Raph.

Her mood darkens as the last name crosses her mind, _Splinter…_

She would find a way to make it up to him; her plan has already been put into play. She's crossed the line now, so there's no turning back and abandoning this mission. Ryu turns her gaze back up to the canopy, _I will finish this, no matter what._

 **RUN!**

Ryu jolts, jumping back a few paces to duck behind a tree. Her breath all but stops in her chest, her body tuning to near silence naturally to listen for any danger around her. The wind still twists around playfully, stirring the leaves, the grass, and her hair. But nothing more.

Everything is quiet once again. She leans out cautiously, shifting her narrowed gaze through the darkening forest around her for any signs of movement.

Nothing.

 _I could've sworn…_ , Ryu thinks to herself, _That voice sounded so close. As if it was right next to me._ That's when she notices it again: a tugging. The earth is calling to her, trying to urge her soul away from her body. She slams her back against the tree and wraps her arms around herself in alarm. _What the heck is going on?! Since when has the earth ever attacked me like this? Something is so wrong!_

The shadows around her lengthen and she glances up. The sky is already dark. How long has she been out here? It's felt like only a few minutes.

Her radio starts making noise again, "Ryu? Ryu, you there?"

"Y-yeah? What's up?"

"Well…uh…Hey!" Venn's voice is cut off for a few second before Venus's comes snarling through, "Get you ugly mug back to the house. We've got issues.

"Tell me something I don't know," Ryu responds, eyeing the forest around her warily and secretly glad to be called out of this suddenly menacing place. She hangs the radio on her clip and starts jogging back the way she came, desperately wanting nothing more than to escape the eerie feeling that something is wrong with her powers and that maybe her body is starting to reject the Trial.

* * *

"No way," April shakes her head, "Mikey wouldn't do something like this."

"Not even on his worse day," Raph adds.

"And why would he write 'Humans Beware'?" the red head continues.

Venus steps into something, the ground feeling oddly shaped under her shoes, and glances down. She instantly picks up her foot and grabs onto Venn's arm, recoiling away from the sight, "Ew, what the heck?"

Venn squats down to get a better look, "Hey, check out these footprints."

"There're over here too," Casey calls from a few yards away.

"And more over here," Donnie points out from a different direction, "Pretty far apart…like they…jumped?"

Raph calls out that he spots more footprints a little ways off, but April suddenly grabs her head and starts wincing in pain, "Agh! Ow. Guys, I got a bad feeling about this!"

Out of nowhere, something rustles behind them in the trees above and then dozens of forms drop to the ground in a long line. The whole group forms together and backs away towards the house. The form in the front stands up and raises the spear in his webbed hand, "Now is the time my brothers. Frogs, ATTACK!"

"Oh, great. More mutant freaks," Venus snaps.

"Liberate the turtles!" the main frog mutant orders to the lower soldiers and they all start hopping forward to attack.

"Back off!" Ryu locks her hands tightly together as if she's going to pray and then slams her fists into the ground, splitting it open so that a high wall of earth can rip up and snake its way across the ground from her. It cuts off the approaching army and curls into a half moon shape around the front side of the house.

"Why didn't you do that sooner?" Venus gripes.

"Why are you still standing here? Get in the house!" Ryu growls back at all of them as she rushes past them towards the front door. They all follow after her and she and Venn slam it shut behind them, locking it and placing their back against it. "You know, you're right. I knew I should've put up a wall around this place the second I got here," Ryu rolls her eyes breathlessly.

"Guys, what is going on?" April exclaims.

"Mutant frogs," Venus answers, "What else?"

Ryu and Venn jerk back away from each other with a gasp as spikes tear through the door between them.

"Repulsive humans! Hear me!"

"Is he talking to us?" April questions.

"I don't see any other humans around, do you?"

"Shut it, Venus," Venn snaps at the girl.

Ryu reaches into her pocket for anything she can use and finds the metal sphere she'd been playing around with that morning. Pulling it out she pushes her power into it and fuses it around her fingers like brass knuckles before slamming her fist into the spikes and pushing them back out the way they had come.

The heavy voice outside continues despite the display, "Free our brothers! The human reign of terror in these woods ends tonight!"

"Uh…these humans didn't kidnap us," Leo calls out as he helps Raph place a wooden bench in front of the door to barricade it. Ryu plops down to rest on it after her long run and leans her head back to find Raph raising an eyebrow at her. She just smiles sheepishly.

"What?!" the booming voice fumbles. "Are they forcing you to say that?"

"Um, no. We're actually pretty good friends with these humans," Donnie calls out.

There's an obvious noise of alarm outside before the booming voice answers, "Friends? With humans?! Then you are traitors! Frogs, show the humans and turtles no mercy!"

The sound of heavy, numerous footsteps comes barreling towards the house and Raph grabs Ryu's arm to pull her up off the chair before spinning her behind him, "Great, I was tired of that conversation anyway." He spins his sai and readies for the approaching battle.

"You know," Ryu glances at him, "Your love of fighting kinda worries me sometimes."

Raph just grins evilly and Ryu rolls her eyes. A large tree trunk knocks down the door like a battering ram and everyone scatters as mutant frogs invade the house. Ryu backs up a towards the living room as two come hopping right at her and she flips back as one of them swings its spear at her, "Wow, for amphibians they sure do move pretty fast."

The bay window in the living room shatters and the wall collapses under the weight of even more frogs as they pour into the house. "Look out! They're everywhere!" April shouts as she defends herself a few paces away from Ryu.

Donnie rushes to help her, leaving the bay window open for more frogs to come in. Ryu presses herself against the doorframe into the living room and then walks up the opposite side of the frame to escape another attack, spinning over and landing on the floor behind them.

"Ryu, can you do something about the house?" Venus calls from her battle on the stairway.

"Like what exactly? Make it disappear?" Ryu responds sarcastically.

"Like maybe lift it up off the ground!"

"Sure, why not! You got three vials to spare?!" Ryu throws her hands up to her sides. "'Cause that's how much it's gonna take to do that!"

Raph comes flipping over the banister to land beside Ryu and kicks an approaching frog away from behind her, "Would you pay attention!"

"Don't even start snapping at me," Ryu glares at him, "I was handling this just fine."

"Not from where I was standing," he snaps, stepping up to put his face up to hers.

Ryu ignores the fact that he really has gotten a few centimeters taller than her and stands up taller to meet his challenge, "Then maybe you should recheck your footing!" Ryu slams her fist into an attacking frog's face without looking away from him.

"Would you two finish your lover's spat some other time, please? Like when we're not being invaded by mutant freak shows?!" Venus gripes as she shoves them apart to hurry into the living room.

"Shut it!" they both growl at her at the same time, following after her. Inside the living room, the frogs have increased in number and Ryu is split up from Raph as a mass of them press in on her and Venus, forcing them into the far corner of the room; spears pointed at their throats.

"Got any bright ideas?" Ryu mumbles to her.

"Well, I could scream them out, but from this angle, I'd probably take out half the house and all your friends along with it," the older girl answers. "You?"

"Well, if I had about _five_ vials I could just lift them all up individually and hurl them all the way to jersey, but there's a lot of 'em to pick up."

A frog throws a spear and they pull away from each other to avoid it and the rock tip splinters into the wall.

"AGH!"

Ryu turns towards the noise only to be hit on the back of the head way too hard for her liking and knocked to the floor.

The frogs suddenly stop as that familiar booming voice cuts out above the noise of battle, "Enough my brothers!" Horns blow a few times, signaling a private message, and the frogs all rush out of the house.

Something grabs Ryu by the wrists and she instantly starts to struggle, but then she's hit yet again and her grip on consciousness slips out of her grasp.

* * *

Ryu's not really sure how she got here. All she can remember through her blurry memories is her head continuously getting dragged along a bumpy surface and then feeling lighter than air as if she's being swung back and forth. And then, faintly, in the back of her mind, she feels the call of the earth getting weaker and weaker as if it's moving away from her.

When she finally starts to come back to her senses, she's faced with a splitting headache and a really foul mood in the pit of her stomach, "I am so getting sick of being knocked out. I never had this kind of trouble before I came here."

"You're awake!"

"Ack!" Ryu gasps as April hugs her around her neck tightly when she starts to sit up. "Okay, I get it. Nice to see you too," her annoyance stirs again and Ryu glances over at her as she rubs the back of her head. April smiles at her, obvious relief on her face, and Ryu rolls her eyes; she's not sure what it is that's getting on her last nerves but she's sure she'll figure it out soon.

"So what's happened?" Ryu asks.

"We got taken captive by a bunch of frogs. That's what happened," Casey grips from a nearby cage. Near him, Ryu spots Mikey and instantly climbs to her feet.

"Mikey, are you okay?"

The younger turtle looks up and sighs heavily, "Sorry, guys, I didn't know they were going to do this to you. I swear, I thought they were nice there for a while."

"It's not your fault, Mikey," April tells him.

"Yeah, we'll get out of here," Ryu adds as she wraps her arms around the twisting bars of the cage curiously. Then her eyes shift down and she squeaks. Her stomach starts to churn at the sight below her, "Heights. Why did it have to be heights?"

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all advice and comments are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	9. Chapter 8: 3-4(Part 2) Raph

_Everyone, I am soooo sorry. These last two updates were supposed to be mine, but I had absolutely NO internet connection on my vacation. So here's two uploads to make up for it. Enjoy!_

 _Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome!_

 _-Ravyne_

 _**DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT**_

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **8**

 **3-4.2: "Raph"**

"So…anyone want to fill me in on what's going on?" Ryu asks as she watches the frog army begin to line up in battle formation below.

"They're going to invade New York and turn everyone into frogs," April explains from beside her.

"And none of you have tried to get out?"

"Not everyone can have powers like you," Casey argues from the cage nearby.

Ryu glares at him, "Who says I can break them open? I can only influence earth elements, not wood. That's a totally different class."

"Class?"

Ryu just shakes her head at him, "Never mind, we've just got to find something sharp and then-."

A loud _crack_ interrupts her sentence and the tree rumbles from the following impact. "Guys!" Mikey exclaims happily. They all follow his gaze to find Donnie, Leo, and Raph have fallen down into the mass of frogs below. Ryu smiles.

"Wow, awkward," Donnie smiles sheepishly at the frogs around him.

The huge leader frog calls to the general frog who hops up onto a nearby branch to shout, "Destroy them!"

"Eat it, froggy!" Raph shouts, kicking the general in the back of the head as Leo comes swooping in to kick an attacking frog away from Donnie. The fight below heats up almost instantly and Ryu hurries to search through her pockets for anything she can use. They must've stripped her clean of everything before locking her in here because she finds nothing.

"Ugh," Ryu grits her teeth and lies back on her side so that she can kick hard at the door. April follows suit and the wood budges little by little, but not enough to make any real progress.

"Get us out of here, Napolean! I got to totally go ninja on their butts!" Mikey calls down to someone below them. Ryu pauses mid-kick and glances over at the kid as if he's gone nuts but then a few moments later, something hits the side of the cage and tosses it off balance.

It's another frog, but this one is different. He's skinny with a bigger head and he wears a white shirt and a goofy hat. He opens their door and holds out a hand to her. She and April stand up and glance at him warily.

"It's okay, guys. He's cool!" Mikey assures them.

Ryu shrugs and takes his frog hand in hers. A long second later, the frog grins behind his buck teeth, "Hey, she's kinda cute."

Ryu smiles, "Aw, thanks. You're kinda adorable too." With that, she drops from the cage to land on the make-shift treehouse floor below, ducking under a spear that swings at her and then tackling the frog to the ground.

"Did I hear you right?"

She turns around to face Raph.

"Did you just call that slimy mutant cute?"

Ryu fights back a smirk and grabs his shoulder with a nod, "You really want to do this? Now?" She spots the attack coming behind him and shoves him out of the way to take the tackle instead of him. Ryu and the frog go rolling across the wood planks a few feet before she finally gets her footing and kicks him off, sending him flying over the edge to the forest below.

"Nice move," Venn helps her to her feet and they both look up as the leader frog snatches Leo up by the throat.

"Halt your attacks or your friend gets it!"

Everyone stops attacking and then, hesitantly, drops their weapons. Frogs come up behind each of them and force them to their knees. Leo struggles against the hold around his neck, but the leader frog only tightens his grasp. Raph tries to get up only to be struck against the back of the head.

"Frogs, tie them up and put them in their cages once again. This time, we will not take chances. They will either join us or be dropped to their deaths," the leader orders.

Ryu stiffens, eyeing the edge of the treehouse cautiously. She's about to move to kick the feet out from under the nearest frog, but Venn moves first—like a flash of light. Smoke explodes around them, throwing everyone off for a second, and Ryu breaks out into a fit of coughs, "Thanks for the warning, loser!"

As it clears, she looks up to find Venn on his feet and one of his guns drawn. The metal is twisting, changing, as it takes the form of a gun made purely of wood and crawling ivy. "Drop the turtle or I take out your tree."

"He'll do it," Ryu nods, holding up her hands in defeat as the frog to her left steps back up to place his spear head against her throat. "He doesn't care what'll happen. You can threaten to hurt us or kill us, but it won't budge him. His mission is to end you if you don't choose to side with us. That's it."

"As if I would believe the words of a pathetic human!" the leader shouts.

Venn smirks, pulling back the hammer on his gun, and his eyes start to glow a pale blue.

"Please do it, I really don't feel like dying today," Venus gripes.

Venn starts going into a rant about what his guns are capable of doing but Ryu zones him out as his last words come to mind: " _Drop the turtle or I take out your tree._ "

 _Take out the tree…_ , Ryu glances back carefully over her left shoulder at the edge of the treehouse planks. _If I could tilt the tree…I could throw them all off balance and that would give us enough distraction to get away._

Her eyes find Leo again, his face turning impossibly blue against his green skin. _It's a really far reach to the ground from here._ Her fingers automatically reach over to finger the chain around her right wrist, feeling the small crystal vial there. _Can I do it? Can I handle it?_

The frog beside her catches her movement and croaks as he presses the spear harder against her throat. She glares up at him, _I've got no choice. No one threatens my family_.

The crystal shatters in her fist and the cool liquid seeps out onto her skin, soaking almost rapidly into her flesh. The reaction is instant, the surge of energy like ice through her blood, and adrenaline pumps into her system. Her power hums through her cheerily and Ryu pushes all of it into her palms as she slaps them down on the wood. As if seeing through new eyes, she can almost see the path her power takes through the wood and through each grain of the tree. Each inch feels like a mile, a minute she loses. The distance is more than she thought, but she keeps pushing more of her power out, searching, scanning.

It's faint, but it calls out. The earth reaches up to her and she smiles. It sings to her and Ryu tells it want she needs.

The tree groans loudly and trembles; the earth beneath it solidifying and crumbling. The pull, the drain, is more than she expected. Ryu locks her jaw and struggles against the physical demand on her own energy. It leeches out of her and makes her heart beat flutter in her chest.

 _Not yet, please hold out,_ Ryu mentally pleads. Beneath her heart beat, that second one thunders to life and she rips her eyes open.

Her vision starts to pull in, to collapse on itself.

 _No!_ Ryu fights against it, pushing it away.

The tree jolts, shuddering terribly, and knocks everyone off balance.

"What is this?!" The leader drops Leo who falls to his knees gasping for breath. Candles fluttering behind him tilt over and fall to the floor below, igniting.

"Ryu, that's enough!" Venn calls out to her. Ryu struggles against the pull, barely able to hear his voice, and starts to pull back from the earth.

Leo starts to crawl away, but the leader grabs him by the foot, "Not so fast! You are responsible for this! You-!"

"STOP IT" Ryu screams, standing up and slamming her foot into the floor as she reaches out farther for the ground. She turns her palms up and pulls up on the invisible connection between her and the earth far below. The tree tilts with a roar.

The leader stumbles, releasing Leo who rolls away.

"Leo, look out! Fire!" April screams. She rushes to his side and helps him up to his feet, "We've got to get out of here!"

Casey goes to help the leader frog up and taps him on the chest with the end of his hockey stick, "Don't take this the wrong way."

With a shove, he knocks the leader onto a nearby elevator made of wood and rope and then calls out to April and Leo to climb on.

"The fire's spreading too fast. There's no saving this place. Come on, Napoleon," Mike grabs his friend by the hand and heads for a nearby elevator just as the tree rocks again. They fall forward and go rolling into the elevator perfectly, joined by Venus and Venn who sits up quickly to dive back out after Ryu. The fires roar up in his face and lick at the rope hold their escape above the forest far below.

"Ryu! Ryu, come on!"

Ryu breaks the connection and falls limply to the floor. Her vision slowly returns and her head stops spinning, but it's getting harder and harder to breath. She's not really sure why. Robotically, her legs lift her up shakily and start walking her towards Venn's voice. A roaring sound hurts her ears and she feebly covers them in attempt to escape the heat.

 _What the heck is going on?_ she thinks, _What did I miss?_ Ryu opens her eyes.

"NO! Ryu, don't look-!"

His voice vanishes from her ears. She freezes solid. All she can see is the fire. The flames…the heat…the death…

" _Go! You have to run!_ "

" _Momma!_ "

" _Go, get out!_ "

" _I don't want to!_ "

" _I have to get your sister! Get to the tree!_ "

" _Noooo!_ "

" _GO!_ "

Something slams into her, throwing her back…and she goes falling through nothing but air.

* * *

"Here, take this out to her. She likes these," Venus hands Raph a green apple from the basket in the center of the table. She leans against the wall, balancing on one foot while the other sits up on her toe; the ankle wrapped in clean white bandages. "Hey," she calls to him as he turns around.

Raph glances back at her, "What?"

"Do you know?"

He rolls his eyes, "About what?"

"Why she locked up."

Raph's eyes drop to the apple in his hand. He may not know much about her past, but he can guess, "It was the fire, right?"

Venus nods, her eyes falling to the floor, "It does something to her. I'm not really sure what, but Ryu told me about it once. She's afraid of it. She once said 'Fire ate my family'…she was only nine when she told me this so it sounded weird to me then. It wasn't until I heard about how her family died that I understood. She relives that. Every time she's caught too close to fire. She sees her mom go after her sister, her father go back in for them, and then the fire eat her whole house up like it was made of paper. Reliving that nightmare over and over…it's painful."

Venus punches the turtle's arm, "So try being a little sensitive. _If_ you have the capability in that oversized ego of yours."

Raph scoffs and stomps off out the front door. It's late, well past midnight, but Ryu still hasn't moved from her spot on the swing outside. She doesn't swing it though. Instead, she sits there like a rock with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Her face is buried out of view, but the moonlight still shines down on her silver-white hair, making it glow almost blue. The wind picks up a few lighter strands and twirls them through the air.

Again, Raph is hit by the urge to touch her hair, but he holds back. The last time he had, it had left them both feeling a bit out of line. He has no right to touch her; he's a mutant.

Shaking his head, Raph holds out the apple and taps her head with it gently, "Hey, rocky, here."

Ryu tightens her arms around her knees and shakes her head, her hair falling farther over her shoulder. Raph forces his eyes to stare at her arms instead—the glow from her hair like the radiance of a halo. "I don't want anything," she mumbles.

He ignores the dead tone in her voice, the sound like a lost puppy, and sits down on the swing next to her.

She sighs heavily, "Raph, please just…I need to be alone right now. Just give me a few minutes."

Raph tosses the apple in the air a few times quietly before he takes note of how stark the color looks against his green skin. His thoughts start to get away from his, trailing back to how her own skin had looked against his. Too different. But then he remembers that she hadn't pulled away, she continued to look at him.

Smiling a bit, he tosses the apple back up into the air and leans back into the swing, "Well, if you want a minute alone, then you have to eat the apple and-."

It's snatched out of the air just as it's floating past his nose and she pulls it out of sight under the shadow of her hunkered form. There's a crunching sound a few seconds later. Raph grins victoriously, folding his hands back behind his head and gazing up at the stars.

The apple core drops onto the swing next to him a few moments later, but she doesn't say anything. Even still, he can see it then, a softening around her edges, and a sigh of relief escapes from him, "Better?"

Ryu stays silent still, not moving. Raph worries that maybe she's even angrier for being bothered, but then her eyes peek out from over her arm. Her bangs fall away with the pull of gravity and her blind left eye is revealed for the first time in what seems like forever. That soft blue, like the early morning sky as the sun finishes rising into the sky, makes something inside him flip. Her other eye, amber as a golden flame is clear again, free of the cloud of fear that had plagued her earlier that night. They both are shining now.

Raph's eyes widen a bit in realization, _Tears._

Ryu blinks repeatedly and throws her hands up over her face with a trembling laugh, an obvious move to hide her embarrassment, "Thanks, Raph. I didn't know it, but I needed that. I owe you one."

She drops her head back down and her face vanishes from view again, leaving Raph to shake himself from his shock, "Yeah you do. I'll let you know when I come up with something."

Ryu's head springs back up, "Well, that was… I was expecting something a little more…understanding, like maybe 'Hey, don't worry about it' or 'I was just being nice'."

Raph smirks at her, "It's like you don't know me at all."

Ryu grins back, "No I think I know you a little _too_ well now."

"At least you know now."

"That you're the devil."

They both laugh and then stare up at the starry sky together in easy silence for a while. Distantly, they both spot a red blinking light soar overhead; a plane. A few silhouettes of birds flutter by. Leaves are blown loose from the treetops nearby by the wind and dance across the dark blue sky.

"Glad you're back."

Ryu blinks in surprise and glances at him. He doesn't move his gaze from the sky, but from where she sits, she can faintly see a tint of red taint his cheeks. She grins evilly and continues to stare at him. Minute by minute she can see his form become more and more uncomfortable.

He finally breaks, "What are you looking at?!"

"That wasn't a full sentence."

"What wasn't?"

"'Glad you're back,'" Ryu mimics his deep tone with a grin. "That's not a complete sentence."

He scoffs and stands to his feet, crossing his arms defiantly, "Yeah it is."

"Uh, no it's not," she jumps to her feet and wraps her arms around his neck from behind, "There should be a pronoun in there somewhere."

"What?" Raph stiffens up at her abruptness and turns his face away. "You're insane."

"No, no, there's certainly a pronoun missing from there, maybe 'everyone' or 'he' or 'they' or 'each' or maybe ' _I_ '!"

"Nope, pretty sure you're wrong," Raph ducks under her arms and escapes her grasp, heading for the house quickly.

"Stubborn! Just say it!" Ryu growls, rushing to tackle him. They both fall to the grass and roll, but she gains ground and shoves his shoulders to the earth to hold him down.

"Say what?!" he snaps up at her as he struggles to flips her off.

Ryu tucks her knees close to his sides in an effort to hold him still and then spots a small movement by his head. She grins and grabs the squiggly worm from the grass and holds it over his face. "You know what! Say it!"

Raph turns his face away from the bug and struggles harder which only forces Ryu to push her whole forearm against his chest to keep him down, "Drop the bug!"

"Not until you say it. Just spit it out or you eat the worm!"

"You wouldn't-!"

"Yes, I would!" Ryu grins as she lowers the worm towards his face. "Just say it."

"No!"

"Say it."

"No, forget it!"

"Say it-!"

"HELLO!"

They both go still, their eyes widening in alarm as they stare at each other. For a second they both share the same question on their faces: was that you? That's when they hear a foot tapping on the steps and they turn their heads to find everyone staring at them from the porch. Venus stands at the front with an eyebrow raised in amusement.

"What are you two doing?" she asks in obvious annoyance.

Ryu sits up and points at him, answering matter-of-factly, "He wouldn't finish his sentence."

"So you felt the need to threaten him…with a _worm_?" Venn counters in disbelief.

Ryu glances down at the poor little creature crawling its way up her fingers and moves to put both legs on one side of Raph's torso so that she can put it back in the grass. It wiggles off rather fast for a worm, curiously, as if it's more than happy to be getting out of the current situation. She then sits up, refusing to let Raph up off the ground, and stares at Venus with a serious look on her face, "Well, I didn't exactly have a cockroach on hand so-."

"WHAT?!" Raph exclaims.

Ryu turns to his outburst uneasily, "What 'what'?"

His eyes are wide in panic, "Who told you?!"

"Told…me…" Ryu thinks for a second, "Oh, the….oh!" She quickly bites her lip nervously and stands up, fiddling her thumbs, "We…I…uh…it was…um…well…"

"MIKEY!"

Ryu jumps back as Raph rushes at the porch and little Mikey leaps out of the way to race across the yard. She winces and calls out after them, "Sorry, Mikey!"

"AAHHH! It wasn't me!" Mikey screams as he races away from his older brother who's hot on his heels.

"Whatever!" Raph leaps up and swings his arms wide, ready to tackle his brother to the ground. It's going to be a long night, but Ryu doesn't mind. She smiles as she watches them. It's moments like these that she wants to treasure, to remember in the end.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 _Please let me know what y'all think so far. Katt B. will be out for a little bit...the lousy immortal "supposedly" somehow caught a cold...right. Lol!_

 _-Ravyne_


	10. Chapter 9: 3-5 In Dreams

_And here's upload number two! Again, so sorry about the mix-up!_

 _Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome!_

 _-Ravyne_

 _**DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT**_

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **9**

 **3-5: "In Dreams"**

"Do you think it'll work?" Ryu glances up from the blueprints to gaze across the counter at her good friend Roy. He's in his late fifties, a brilliant mechanic, and a retired member of the Dragons. He had turned down the offer to enter the final trial that would allow him to become a Dragon just for the simple fact that he had fell in love with the country and this small town.

So he left the order and settled down out here to start his own little business with his new bride Melissa. Sadly, Melissa died from cancer a few years back and those who truly knew him can see the lonely look haunting the edges of his eyes even now. But he always wears a smile all the same. His warm personality always brings light to anyone's day and Ryu has always admired that.

Roy sighs, rubbing his mouth with his hand as he stares down at the designs, "I don't know…I mean…Ryu, this is _really_ complicated…H-how did you even come up with this?"

Ryu shrugs, "I live for this stuff, you know that. It's my favorite hobby."

"Yeah, but for someone of your young age to come up with this…" He glance up at her, his deep blue eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Just how smart are you?"

She scoffs and throws her head back to laugh. Leaning off the counter, her hands prop on her hips and her eyes dance in amusement, "Come on, Roy, I'm not that smart."

"You graduated from college two years ago."

Ryu's smile falls from her face at his serious expression and she quickly leans back on the counter to hide her embarrassment, "Yeah, okay, can you just try? If it doesn't work, then I'll think of something else."

Roy chuckles and picks up the blueprints, rolling them up carefully to place inside a cabinet with a pad lock, "I'll see what I can do, but what you're asking for is worrying me. There's going to be a lot of unnecessary speed packed onto that bike of yours." He turns to raise an eyebrow at her over his shoulder, "Don't kill yourself, alright?"

She just throw him a crooked grin, "Really, Roy? You know it's all just 'cause I'm bored."

"Yeah, that's what worries me."

She passes him an envelope with the money he'll need and quickly turns around so that she doesn't have to face the look of suspicion he throws at her the second he sees the amount of bills inside. She waves bye without looking back and closes the front door to the shop behind her.

Outside in the van, Venn, Leo, and Raph all wait for her to return.

"So…?" Venn asks curiously. Ryu slowly pulls on her seat belt, meeting his gaze cautiously.

"What?"

"How'd it go?"

"Drop it, Venn. It's none of your business," she snaps her seat belt in and turns her gaze out the front of the windshield.

"Oh, come on. You never tell me what you're building," he whines.

"Well, duh. I never tell anyone…at least not until it's done."

Venn stares at her quietly, showing no sign of starting up the engine, "It was on paper. That means it's done."

"Just because it's on paper doesn't mean it's _actually_ going to work!" Ryu rolls her eyes.

"Can you at least give me a hint?"

She sighs and hangs her head, rubbing her forehead absentmindedly, "It's just a…toy. Nothing special."

"A toy?"

"A…personal toy," Ryu presses her lips together to hold in anymore words from slipping out, but out of the corner of her eye she can see Raph, Leo, and Venn all staring at her, patiently waiting. "Ugh, it's just something to get rid of the boredom. I haven't had much time to tinker with my bike in a while so I decided to take the opportunity."

Venn narrows his gaze, "Yeah, now I'm worried. When it comes to your bike, you usually come up with something dangerous…nothing even remotely resembling a toy."

She spins on him, "A little speed boost is not dangerous!"

"It is if you're attaching it to that heap of junkyard scrap metal. A speed boost any faster than thirty miles per hour would have that thing breaking into pieces."

"Lenne is not a piece of junkyard scrap metal! I've fixed it up better than that, thank you," Ryu crosses her arms and sinks down into the seat to glare out her side window. The van goes quiet for a long moment.

"Lenne?" Leo snickers.

"You named your bike?" Raph grins.

Ryu huffs, throwing them all glares as they laugh at her, "It was the name of the wife of the guy I bought it from."

"And you couldn't change it?" Venn hoots. "I mean, guys usually name their vehicles girl names, but girls are supposed to name their vehicles guy names."

"No, changing the original name is always bad luck," she argues.

"I changed the name of the van," he shoots back, tapping the steering wheel of the vehicle in question.

Ryu suddenly grins, "No wonder is drives like a piece of junkyard scrap metal."

Raph and Leo burst into even louder hysteria behind them and she just grins cockily at Venn whose smile has dropped clean off his face. Biting back his words, he turns the ignition key and cranks the engine. It backfires and they just laugh even harder, Ryu joining in this time.

* * *

Back at the farm house, they arrive to find everyone out in the yard training. Raph and Leo race over the second their feet hit the ground to join in on the action; finding their weapons waiting for them on the porch. Ryu hands Venus the radio Venn had had before going to train as well and then heads for the barn. Swinging the door open, she expects to find Donnie hard at work, but the place is empty. Her eyes narrow in confusion as she leans back out the door to look back at the sparing group.

"Hey, where's Donnie?" she calls.

"He wouldn't wake up so I put a pair of underwear on his face," Mikey grins mischievously.

Ryu shakes her head at the little guy, not really sure of what she should say exactly, so instead she swings her arm around his neck and rubs her knuckles into his skull, "Mikey…I really don't know what to say. You are several kinds of crazy, you know that?"

"L.T.D.? Like a Turtle Do!" he moonwalks his way backwards back towards his other brothers before flipping out his weapons. Ryu laughs and heads back into the unofficial workshop they've set up inside the barn. She and Venn had moved the strangely familiar computer they had found in the Kraang ship under the house inside the barn about a week ago. Everyone was surprised to find that it wasn't even attached to the ship itself, powered by something internally that was separate from the rest of the machine.

Since then, Ryu's tried to figure out another way to read the disk without having to pull it out, but no other way seems possible. Whoever rigged this obvious booby trap knew what they were doing…almost too perfectly.

Ryu sits down on the hay bale next to the table with her computer stuff on its surface and boots up her laptop. She hadn't been able to make it to her base in the city when they had first arrive, too many Kraang were around who outnumbered them, but she was lucky to have her laptop with her from home back at the village. Somehow she knew she was going to need it.

The screen boots up and a message blinks to life, awaiting her approval.

 **Scan complete…Test failed.**

Ryu groans and drops her forehead onto the desk in defeat. This is possibly the hundredth test she's performed and nothing has worked. Lifting her head back up, her eyes follow the cord from her laptop, across the table, and plugged into the only outlet they could find on the eerily familiar computer.

 _Guess that's it then_ , she thinks, getting up and unplugging the cord from the machine. She stands in front of it, gazing down at the black screen in deep thought. Slowly, uncertainly, Ryu's finger taps a dusty key. The computer screen lights up.

 **Denied**. The message flashes across the screen and the small, blue flash drive slides out not three inches away from it. Ryu stares at it…

Her fingers reach towards it shakily…

Maybe it wouldn't do anything…

Maybe the computer will just shut down again…

Maybe the disk won't have anything on it…

 _Too many maybes_ , Ryu thinks. Her hand pauses, the disk just centimeters from her fingertips. _Too many ifs. I've got to know. This could help my family._

She drops her hands and sighs, hanging her head as she leans against the machine, "What am I doing? Have I lost my mind? It's probably just shut down codes for the ship. That's not enough to risk the lives of my family." Ryu returns to her chair by her table and gets to work searching for any news on New York's status, turning her thought away from the blue disk entirely.

By the time she finds any news, she's too exhausted to really read it. Everything she finds is the same: no one's allowed in or near the city, police are saying that nothing's wrong, the explosions and crazy light were blamed on a gas explosion but no one was hurt…

The list goes on and on; Ryu has a funny feeling that it's all being seeded by the Kraang. Her thoughts instantly dive somewhere she would've rather forgotten. Shredder and his followers…Tigerclaw…

 _Wonder what happened to them,_ she shakes the thought clear before it even has a chance to fully form and slams her laptop screen closed. "That's the signal for a break," she tells herself as she leaves the barn.

The front door is ajar when she walks in, finding Venus and Casey standing just inside the doorframe to the living room.

"Back already?" Ryu asks Venus as she steps up behind her. "Did you find me some chocola-?" her words die in her mouth. April and Venn are crouched on the floor next to Donnie's still body, "What's going on?"

April looks up, "We came back to find them all like this. They're asleep, but they won't wake up."

 _What?!_ Ryu takes two large steps and reaches across the back of the couch to touch Raph's sleeping face. His skin is cool to the touch. Her eyes widen as she looks down at Leo asleep on the couch and she checks him next. Same thing.

"What the heck?"

"That's what we said," Venus rolls her eyes.

"You know, that guy at the store was fishy. He asked if we'd been feeling tired lately and then we get home to this," Casey spits out.

Ryu spins on him as he walks by and grabs a handful of the front of his shirt, "What else did he say?"

Casey throws his hands up in surrender at her demand, "T-that's it. I mean, he was pretty protective of his stuff, but-."

"He's a store owner. He can't be protective of his stuff if he wants to sell it," Venus gripes.

"I think he means when Casey went behind the counter and-."

"Did you try to steal something?" Ryu demands, cutting Venn off.

"What? No! I just saw this weird lookin' book with some random gibberish on the front and-."

"What gibberish?"

"Why don't you stop barking at me?!" Casey snaps.

"Ryu, calm down," Venn orders, standing up slowly. Ryu gradually releases the front of Casey's shirt and he takes a step back.

"What'd it say?" Venn continues.

"I don't know…uh…O-obturaculi-lu….Somni-something. I can't remember," Casey stuffs his hands into the joined pocket on the front of his hoody.

Ryu drops her eyes to the floor in thought, _obtura…obtu…obturaculi-lu? That's not even a word. Somni…somni…That's familiar…_

"Obturaculum…does that sound right?" Ryu asks.

Casey thinks for a second and then nods.

Ryu turns to glance at Leo again over the back of the couch, "Obturaculum Somniorum."

"Y-yeah, that's it," Casey exclaims.

"What does it mean?" Venn inquires.

Ryu rubs her forehead, "I'd need to brush up on my Latin…"

"You took Latin?"

She glares at the older girl, "I did go to college you know. Two languages are required now a days."

"That's…something about dreams," they all turn around to face April who has moved to put Donnie's head in her lap. "I took Latin and I remember a little," she looks up worriedly, "Could they be trapped in their dreams?"

"One way to find out," Venus moves across the room and kneels down on the floor to place both thumbs in the center of Donnie's forehead and the rest of her fingers at his temples before closing her eyes. With a few centering breaths, she goes silent for what seems like forever. When she does speak, her voice sounds far off as if she's somewhere else, "Their energy points are in chaos right now; their spirits are being strained. Something's got them trapped, I can feel it, but I'm not psychic so I can't see any further than their souls."

"Maybe I can," April places her hands on either side of Donnie's head and closes her eyes next, going silent.

While they are busy with their examination, Ryu moves to Raph's side and takes his hand in hers. In just this short amount of time, his temperature has gone down even more. Her eyebrows pull together anxiously. She can hear them start talking again behind her, but she's too caught up in her thoughts to hear.

"Ryu," Venn calls. She looks back at them over her shoulder.

"I'm going to try to pull their spirits back to their bodies 'cause they're slipping away," Venus explains.

"Couldn't you just reach them with your psychic powers?" Ryu asks April.

"Maybe…"

Venus starts asking April more in-depth questions about the specifics of her abilities, leaving Ryu to shift through all the information as it comes out, "Wait."

They both look up at her.

"You could…Venus remember when we were younger, that time when you sent yourself on a spirit walk?"

Venus glances to the side, thinking back, "Yeeaaah?"

"Could you send someone else?" Ryu asks.

"Ryu, first off, this isn't the time to be going on a spirit walk, two, this is a mental matter not a soul matter, and third, I've never done it before so I wouldn't know how."

"Well, then, this is your chance to get some practice in," Ryu drops into an indian-style sitting position on the floor beside Donnie's shoulder, right between April and Venus, and starts to take centering breathes to calm her racing heart.

"Are you nuts? We don't know if it'll even work and how do you know I'll be able to even send you to the mental plane? I'm a spirit master."

"Hold on, I could channel her," April cuts in. "You pull her spirit and I'll direct her."

Venus glances between the two of them as if they're crazy, but before she can break out into an all-out frenzy, Venn crouches down behind her to take her by the shoulders, "We don't have any other plans. Just try."

"What if I screw up and Ryu ends up walking the spirit plane for the rest of eternity?!" Venus snaps, turning on him.

"And what if you don't?" Ryu raises her voice. "Stop doubting yourself. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but at least we can say that we tried."

Venus glares at her, breathing heavily, and for a shattering moment Ryu's afraid she's going to strangle her, but then the older girl sighs and slouches out of her tight pose. With another sigh, she says, "Fine, but if you get lost, you better not haunt me."

Ryu fights back a grin, "No promises."

Venus raises her uncertain gaze to hers and forces a sideways grin, "Kay, ready your soul cause it may be too much of a jolt for it. April take my hand and put you other hand on Donnie's head. When you feel a sort of…pressure come over your own soul don't allow it to get too close, just picture it going through you and into Donnie's mind. Nothing more. You have to…"

Ryu zones them out, glancing back over her shoulder at Raph's sleeping face. This could be the last time she sees him, but she's confident that Venus can do this…sort of.

"Okay," Venus's voice pulls Ryu back to the situation at hand as the other girl reaches out towards her with her left hand. She places her thumb in the center of Ryu's forehead and the rest of her fingers at her temple. "Close your eyes and center yourself, but keep your thoughts clear. If you focus too hard on the task, you spirit will jolt back out of the phase and it could jump off somewhere…or break…either one."

"Well that's comforting," Ryu grumbles sarcastically.

"I did warn you."

"Come on, guys, we can do this," April smiles encouragingly, but Venus and Ryu share a worried look.

They all close their eyes, Ryu last, and take a deep breath at the same time. This would be a test for all of them to pass…one that would either break them or kill them.

* * *

Raph hits the ground again, sitting up against the pain throbbing through him. He's getting more exhausted by the minute. When he opens his eyes, he finds his brothers sprawled over the ground same as him. "W-what's going on?"

"I'm having the weirdest dream…" Donnie replies, rubbing his head.

"But you can't be dreaming," Leo glares at him, "I'm here!"

"That's because I'm dreaming you!"

"Maybe I'm dreaming you, but you're not dreaming me," Leo shakes his head defiantly.

"Ah, man! Where'd all the candy go?!" Mikey whines.

"Hang on, guys, I think we're all in the same dream," Raph suggests.

"That's impossible!" Leo argues.

"Nothing's impossible," a voice cuts him off. They all look up to find a red beaver crawling down a building with his long yellow claws. The beaver lifts his head, boring his strange black eyes into the turtles below on the ground, "For the Dream Beavers!"

Donnie laughs weakly, "I'm sorry, did you just say…Dream…Beavers?"

The beaver stands up on the side of the building as if gravity has no law there, and calls out loudly to some hidden hiders as if they're playing a game of hide-and-seek. Around the city, the ground starts rumbling, cars start rocking and blaring their alarms, while strange lights and smoke start pillowing out from under the man hole covers in the streets.

Around the original beaver, an orange beaver and purple beaver with similar eyes pop out behind him while a blue beaver with normal looking eyes crawls out beside him. They grin darkly down at the turtles who watch in horror at the sight, laughing menacingly.

"You think you are alone in your dreams, but you're not! For years we have wandered here, stealing the life force of humans-."

"But dude, we're not humans!" Mikey cuts him off.

"We know," Another beaver starts, "That's precisely what makes your life force so delicious!" The city world vanishes around them only to be replaced by a world of lights and haze and stars, almost like they're stuck out in the universe.

"Seriously," the red beaver continues, "Living off human life forces meal after meal and then suddenly…turtles!"

"I like chocolate chip cookies," the blue beaver grins goofily.

"Shut up, Dave!" the other beavers snarl at him.

The purple beaver suddenly picks up the turtles in his clawed hands and throws them into the air, "We're going to drain you dry and spit out your shells."

" _Ew._ "

Everything stops, the turtles pause mid-air where they are thrown and they glance at each other in confusion.

The beavers glance around. "What was that?" the red one asks.

"Was that you, Dave?" the orange one glares at his comrade. The blue beaver just laughs goofily and folds his hands with an innocent look.

" _Aw, that's cute._ "

The beavers jump at the voice again, "Who's there?!"

The purple beaver touches the red on the shoulder, "Wait, brother, can you not smell that?" They all take a good long whiff and sigh, sharing a dark, knowing look. "Human," they say in union.

"Human?" Donnie whispers, "You mean, there's a human trapped in here with us?"

"Who? I don't see anyone?" Mikey replies.

"What if it's one of our own, like Casey or Venus?" Leo gasps.

Raph's eyes widen worriedly as his thoughts travel to Ryu. There's no way she could've gotten trapped here. There's no way… "We're got to find them," he says.

Leo and his brothers all nod but they abruptly fall again and land in the streets of New York again. The Dream Beavers stalk towards them, "Let's finish our meal first boys. Dessert can come later."

The scene blinks, everything spinning for a split second but appears back in black and white…along with panels.

"What the heck," Raph glares using the handle of his sai to poke at the outline of the panel next to him, "Where the heck are we?"

"Back in the real world at last," Mikey smiles with a sigh.

"This looks real to you?" Donnie growls.

"More or less," Mikey nods, "Except for those guys."

Above them, the Dream Beavers watch them from the building tops, the only thing in color. "I spy with my little eye, something green!" the blue beaver laughs.

"Shut up, Dave!" the others shout at him before leaping down and landing on the turtles, crashing down through the panels until they break back out into color again, once again hitting the ground. The turtles flip to their feet and scatter as the beavers attack, Leo drawing his swords as the purple one approaches him.

"Now you see me, now you don't," the beaver laughs, swinging his tail around him and vanishing into smoke. He flashes in behind Leo and goes to attack.

Leo spins around to defend, but he's a bit too late.

" _No!_ " something faded and see through appears between them and swings at the purple beaver, knocking him away.

"What the-?" Leo's question is stopped as Donnie's body slams into him and they go tumbling down to the floor which turns out to be the ceiling. Mikey and Raph are thrown there as well and they stand back to back as the beavers circle in.

"What happened to you?" the red beaver asks the purple one.

The beaver rubs his face, "I don't know, but the smell has changed. It's different than human." The beavers all take another whiff.

"It's far off," the red beaver laughs, "We have time to deal with it later."

Leo spots it before anyone else: that faded shape zipping behind the beavers as it flies over towards the wall to spin a wheel. A water valve; water rushes through the room and crashes into all of them, sending them soaring through backdrop after backdrop of different scenes until they land in a dark room. The temperature here is immense, chains hanging from the ceiling that hold up slabs of meat that are being prepared to be cooked.

Mikey is slung over one of these slabs of meat, but when he turns around, he screams in horror. They're not slabs of meat, they're turtle shells. The chain snaps and Mikey falls down onto a conveyer belt alongside his brothers. At the end, there's a large barrel of boiling hot liquid and the Dream Beavers stand there around it sharpening their knives and forks and cutting up vegetables to go in the soup.

The conveyer belt fires up and starts to move the turtles down the line towards the boiling barrel and the turtles start to struggle to free their arms and legs from inside their shells, but nothing works. They can't move; their screams filling the room around them.

"Yum yum!" the beavers taunt them over and over again as they inch towards their death. "Time for dinner!"

" _Time for the bill!_ "

The conveyer belt jolts to a stop and everyone turns from the vat of boiling water to the other end of the room. That faded, burry figure has the end of the belt tightly, pulling it in the opposite direction.

"Ugh…Venus, come on! Focus! I need a little more help here!" the figure screams, the voice sounding oddly echoed and full of static.

As if on cue, the figure's blurr goes away and the edges are refined around it. Someone in black.

"Ryu?" Donnie squints to try and see the figure better.

"What? How do you know?" Leo yells.

Donnie shakes his head, trying to understand it himself, "I-I don't know…I just…do…"

"Then how come it doesn't look like her?" Raph shouts and they all turn back to Ryu. She's shorter than they remember, her hair hidden away under a black hood and her face covered by her gas mask. Both of her eyes are the same color now, but not one they know.

Deep brown they are, and young; like the eyes of a child.

"R-Ryu?"

With one last, harsh, tug, the conveyer belt comes loose and spills the turtles over onto the floor. Sadly, though, their legs and arms still don't return to their control, remaining plugged up inside their shells.

Ryu rushes up to their side, "Are you guys okay?"

They all stare at her in confusion, blinking.

"Hello? Tell me you can't talk now either," she rolls her eyes.

"Ryu?" Leo asks.

"Yeah, who else?"

"You don't…look like Ryu…" Donnie blinks.

Ryu cocks her head to the side in bewilderment, "Huh?"

"You don't sound like yourself either," Raph adds.

She coughs and chants out 'hello' a few times to hear herself, "What the heck?" Reaching up, she flips back the hood and pulls off her mask. The turtles' jaws drop near to the floor. "What the-?" Ryu gazes down at her hands after pulling off the black gloves. She knows these hands, but from a _long_ time ago.

"You look like a kid!" Mikey starts laughing.

"I am a kid! I'm back to being twelve years old!" Ryu grabs hold of her face and starts to panic, "Dang it, Venus you screwed up!"

"Screwed up what?" Raph asks, but she's unable to answer before the beavers appear behind her.

"Eh heh heh heh," the purple one laughs as he gazes down at her, "This is the one we smelled before. A simple child."

"Cutie pie," the blue one giggles.

"Shut. Up. DAVE!" the others shove the blue one away until he disappears in a puff of smoke. "Let's eat her now; she's been nothing but trouble," the orange one suggests.

"No," the purple beaver stops his comrades as they encroach on her, "We will grill her up later. First the salty ones!"

"Help me out here, Donnie!" Ryu cries as she dashes under the legs of the Beavers and runs away. "Anything, please!"

"What are you talking about?!" Donnie exclaims, "I'm kinda stuck in my shell over here!"

"I'm not here physically, just spiritually. They sent me into your dream, so this is your zone. You control things here!" she ducks as one of the Beavers appears in front of her and attacks her head. A chain hits her back and forces her to duck again and climb into the jungle the numerous links create along the far side of the room.

"Ho, ho, lookie here!" the purple beaver laughs. He holds out a chain and it changed into a snake that slithers out towards her. Ryu backs against the wall with a scream.

"Hey, looks like someone doesn't like snakes," the red beaver chuckles.

The wall digs deeper and deeper into her back, the concrete cutting into her skin painfully, but she's not about to pull away. The snake inches forward, its skin shimmering until it changes into a near white tone. Her eyes widen in alarm; this snake she knows.

The snake opens its jaws with a hiss, long white fangs gleaming in the dim light, but then it coughs like a cat spitting up a fur ball. It jerks again and again until the body begins to shift and crumble. The white skin begins to crackle as thick brown fur replaces it.

"Meow?"

Ryu blinks as the furry creature falls into her hands and she holds it out away from her with a look of disgust, "A cat, Donnie? Really?"

"It was the first thing I could think of!" the turtle screams in a shrill panic.

"I'd take Ice Cream Kitty over this any day!"

Abruptly, the cat in her hands starts to shift again, melting in her hands and changing to browns, whites, and pinks as it mutates into their favorite little ball of ice cream. Ryu blinks in surprise.

"Uh…thanks?" she chuckles weakly.

"I…didn't…"

"Sorry, that was me!" Mikey exclaims.

They all turn to him in shock. "Wait," Leo starts, "If Mikey did that…"

"Then we all can," Raph finishes.

Ice Cream Kitty screams a high growl and leaps out of her arms at the Beavers, latching on to the red one's face as it scratches and hisses. The beaver yelps and flies back as he struggles to free himself from the howling mutant.

Ryu ducks out of the chains quickly to escape the other two Beavers who claw at her, but they pop back in front of her. Their towering forms make her twelve-year-old form look like a small rag doll next to a huge elephant.

Light blazes to life across her chest, burning her eyes, and she's forced to cover them against the light. She screams out in alarm. Ice Cream Kitty falls to the floor forgotten as the beaver she's attacking vanishes. The last two Beavers back away from the light, disappearing into the air too as it takes up the whole room.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 _Please let me know what y'all think so far. I'll try to get embarrassing pics of Katt's snotty nose while she's sleeping and post them on my page. Lol!_

 _-Ravyne_


	11. Chapter 10: 3-5(Part 2) Ryu

_Here's chapter ten for everyone! I know that the...'emotional' part of Ryu and Raph's relationship hasn't really developed, but that's something Katt B. and I decided to do on purpose. Simply for story length purposes only. We didn't want them to evolve too quickly, so this part of the series is basically them really breaking through that awkward stage. The next part of the series is going to have WAAAY more development between them, I assure you..._

 _And I'm going to shut up before I give too much away...surprise! There's going to be "Part 3"!_

 _Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome!_

 _-Ravyne_

 _**DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT**_

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **10**

 **3-5.2: "Ryu"**

Ryu blinks open her eyes and looks around, afraid to move. She spots the turtles across the room, still closed in their shells, but the Beavers are nowhere in sight. So then what happened?

That's when she feels the heaviness across her shoulders. Like, five pounds more weight. Ryu looks down curiously only to find plated steel fused across her chest, chain links connecting the chest plate to the shoulder guards over her arms. Her eyes widen in awe.

 _What the heck is all this?_

Nearby whooping cheers catch her attention and she looks up to see the turtles laughing. "It actually worked! This is awesome!" Leo shouts.

"It's like a video game!" Mikey adds.

"Do you dorks think this is some kind of game? You're lives are at stake here!" Ryu yells at them. Another burst of light explodes, forcing her to cover her eyes again to block it out. When is vanishes, Ryu finds a long, flashy sword held in her hand; the blade gleams threateningly from some unknown inner light deep within the steel.

The Beavers reappear but take a cautious step back.

She twists the blade in her hand, watching the light reflect off the sharp edges, and her reflection flashes back at her. Her image has changed, once again back to her old self, and Ryu can feel a smile pull at her lips. These are the eyes she knows, this is the nose she recognizes. As she looks up, she finds Raph staring at her from across the room—this was his doing.

She mouths a thank you at him and then turns back to the Beavers circling her threateningly, spinning the blade in her hand and grinning.

"Alright," Ryu flashes a smile, "Let's do this!"

The first Beaver rushes at her and Ryu spins towards him to swing the blade in a wide arch. He vanishes quickly in a puff of smoke to avoid the swords sharp edge before Ryu corrects her path, twisting her ankle, and flipping the blade in her hand to strike at the next Beave behind her. The red Beaver ducks and slashes at her feet with his long claws, forcing Ryu to leap up into the air to dodge the attack. She touches the ground just long enough to bring her feet underneath her and then jumps up again and flips over the red Beaver so that she can escape the circle they have formed around her again.

The purple Beaver appears in front of her and Ryu drops to her side to skid under his legs and continue on towards the turtles, who have started to struggle lose from the invisible bonds that still hold them captive. As if released from some kind of spell, the turtles jump to their feet and take a stance next to Ryu as she lifts her sword and faces the Beavers.

"So…anyone have a plan?" she asks, glancing expectantly towards Leo.

He blinks in surprise, "Uh…"

"Oh no," Ryu groans, the tip of her sword sagging a bit in defeat.

"I got this, bros!" Mikey steps up in front of all them and starts swinging his nun chucks around.

Ryu drops her sword completely, "God, help me."

"Come on, Ryu," Donnie nudges her, "Like you said, this is our dream—we can do this."

Ryu rolls her eyes and brings her sword back up, "Positive people; so annoying."

"Look, boys," the red Beaver chuckles, "They're preparing for battle."

"A battle they cannot win," the purple one adds with a grin.

"Let's eat them all quickly. I'm starving," the last one licks his huge front teeth.

Ryu tightens her grip on the hilt of her sword and shifts her foot across the cement floor, "Bring it, you overgrown fur balls."

The Beavers lunge all at once, the turtles raise their weapons and race forward, Ryu follows close behind them. The space between the two armies vanishes by the second; they almost clash—

 _FLASH!_

"What the heck?!"

"What's going on?"

"Mikey, what'd you touch?!"

"Why is it always me?!"

Her head is pounding, a pain filling in behind her eyeballs until they feel like they're swelling out of her skull. Whatever that light had been, it certainly did a number on her. Strange thing is, she doesn't remember anything happening to her. Well, not exactly.

With a groan, Ryu sits up and pops her neck a couple of times before blinking her eyes open against the bright white light of the…

 _Where the…heck…am I?_ , Ryu glances around. She's not sure if she's in a room or a whole wide world of nothing but white light. _Oh, dear Lord, please tell me I'm not dead._

A few familiar groans catch her attention and she peeks back over her shoulder. A smile of relief breaks out across her face. Donnie, Mikey, Leo, and Raph are all there too, sitting up and stretching off the floor. But that's not the only thing here with them.

"What…is that?" She asks.

The turtles follow her line of sight and find a swirling vortex of blue and yellow lights spiraling to a pin point in the center. Beyond it, there are murmurs that whisper out from beyond the unknown.

"Do you guys here that, or am I going insane?" Ryu climbs slowly to her feet.

"Well, we are in a room of…whatever this is…" Leo eyes the misty glow of the white world around them worriedly.

Ryu shoots him a glare, "I'm talking about… **that**."

"What?" Mikey shrugs.

"That! Those voices," she points at the vortex as she steps up closer to it. The vortex is creating a vacuum around it, the pull lifting a few strands loose from her hair tie and swirling them through the air towards it. She tilts her head closer to the vortex so that she can hear better and sure enough there's a response…

" _Why'd you do that?_ "

" _You've doomed us all!_ "

" _Casey, are you nuts?!_ "

Ryu pulls away, raising an eyebrow, _Casey?_ These are voices that she knows. Venus, April. But one voice sounds weird, unknown. Like some old, crabby guy who lives in one of those creaky houses with barred windows and a door that barely hangs on its hinges.

"Is that April?" Donnie gasps.

"They sound like they're in trouble," Leo glares.

Ryu suddenly comes to recognition, "Wait, you don't think…?"

They all share a look and at the same time, "THE BEAVERS!"

"Do you think they got out?"

"They couldn't have," Ryu shakes her head.

"That could've been what that bright light was," Donnie suggests.

"So they've been released," she drops her head into her palm.

"They must've gotten out through here," Donnie continues, reaching out to touch the swirling lights, "So this could be our way out too."

"Emphasis on ' **could be** '," Ryu groans.

"Well, if the shoe fits," Mikey shoves through the group and leaps through the vortex.

"MIKEY!"

Leo jumps through after his little brother, getting yelled at by the others, "LEO!"

"Am I the only one left with a brain?!" Donnie cries before leaping in too.

"Obviously not!" Ryu yells.

"Come on!" Raph grabs her hand and starts to pull her forward after them.

Ryu jerks him back, "Are you nuts?! We don't know where that could lead! For all we know we could be spit out into space and die of-!"

"Would you shut up," Raph turns on her. Ryu blinks in surprise as he grabs her by the shoulders and gives her a gentle shake. "Sometimes you just have to jump."

"And die," Ryu glares at him. "And who's to say that I can jump through there anyway? I'm not physically here. This is your consciences. Not mine. I don't even know if I leave the same way as I came."

Raph glances at the vortex behind him, a dark look flashing over his eyes so quickly that Ryu can't be sure that it's real. She smiles and touches his shoulder this time.

"Raph, go. I'll be okay. I'll get out."

"But-!"

"Shut up," she laughs, "I'll be okay. I'll see you guys on the other side."

Raph stares at her for a second more and then nods, turning towards the vortex. Ryu sighs and turns back to the world of white to figure out how she is supposed to leave now, when—

"Ryu."

"Yea-?"

Her breath stops with her heart as he pulls her towards him and kisses her on the cheek. Ryu's whole body freezes up like a block of ice, unable to move from straight up shock. Her brain shuts down. She can't come up with a single thought at all.

 _What the-? Wh-! Jus-! He-? Wai-! HUH!?_

The second he pulls away, he jumps through the vortex and away from her in the span of a second. Ryu can only stand there and blink like a complete moron at the center of the vortex where he had disappeared to.

" **MINA!** "

The shriek quakes through her like a blazing hot knife and Ryu spins around in a flash against the attack. Behind her, a small portion of the white world is beginning to distort and turn black and gray. The distortion blurs, shifts, and almost turns solid into something like a door; a brief flash of an image shimmers across the surface. Her eyes widen in alarm.

The image is of a person, slamming their fists on the other side of the see-through 'door' as if they're trying to escape from the inside, but it's too blurry to make out any features of the person. All that Ryu can make out is the sound of that shrieking voice dying off again as the 'door' begins to fade back into the white background.

" **M…i…..St….RUN!** "

 _Run?_ , Ryu thinks, narrowing her eyes in confusion, _Run from what?_

Another bright light swamps her from behind and invisible hands seem to latch onto her shoulders and waist and jerk her back, knocking the wind right out of her.

* * *

"Donnie! Guys, you're okay!" April exclaims with tears brimming in her eyes as she smiles down at the turtle slowly waking up in her arms. His big brown eyes blink up at her a little out of focus, but then he grins back up at her.

"H-hi," Donnie replies.

"Glad to see you guys awake, now why isn't she?" Venn demands.

Raph jerks up straight in the chair he sits in, body stiff as a board as if he's been sitting there for years, and his eyes search to find Ryu immediately. His thoughts instantly drift back to what he had done and his face burns under his red mask.

Ryu lay motionless on the floor not far from where Donnie has his head in April's lap. Venus kneels next to her, hand outstretched over the shorter girl's chest where it hovers maybe six inches in the air. Her palm is glowing bright, a neon pink-purple that almost seems to glitter as the power radiates from Venus's hand. Everyone moves to circle around them, studying the event worriedly. Venn more than anyone.

"Why isn't she waking up?" April asks quietly, glancing between Venus and Ryu's still body. The sleeping girl looks almost pale; too pale. "Venus?"

Venus's brows are furrowed fiercely in tight concentration, as if she's fighting some internal battle of tug-of-war. The center of her black pupils are alight with a pink-purple pin-sized dot glow that gets brighter and brighter with each second of intense focus.

"Venus, what's going on? Why isn't she coming back?" Venn asks, kneeling down to touch her stiff shoulder.

Venus opens her mouth, voice sounding stiff and shaken all at the same time, "I…I don't…know. S-something's…blocking her…I can't find her anymore…she's…"

"What do you mean you can't find her?!" Raph shouts.

"Let her concentrate," Venn warns.

"I…just had her…and then she just…slipped…away…I-I can't find her…" Venus continues to mumble to herself as a drop of sweat falls from her forehead.

Raph tightens his hands into fists, chest constricting until he can't catch his breath. He shouldn't have left her; he should've made her come back with him. He should've-.

"Wait!" Venus gasps, eyes widening with a start, "Got her!"

Ryu's body convulses, sucking in a gasping breath as if she'd been drowning, and breaks down into a coughing fit.

"Ryu!" everyone exclaims with relief as the girl sits up shakily. She starts to fall back but Raph drops to his knees behind her to catch her. She's trembling terribly, as if from some internal earthquake within her, catching Raph off guard. His hands tighten anxiously around her shoulders.

"Ryu, calm down," Venus chants to the heaving girl shaking before her, "What the heck is wrong with you?! You look like you've seen a ghost."

Ryu tries her hardest to catch her breath, but nothing works. Her heart is hammering too loud, her lungs are burning, her blood is cold. What had that been? Who had been behind the door? What warning were they trying to pass on to the physical world?

And most importantly, why was she able to hear it?

Another wave of coughs hits her again.

"Hold her or she'll hurt herself!" Venus demands.

Raph wraps his arms around Ryu's shoulders, pinning her gently to his chest so that she can still breathe and fight off her coughs. Once it passes, she collapses back against him and tries to get her breathing under control; her lungs burn like white hot fire.

"She needs to rest," Venn suggests, "Let's take her upstairs."

Ryu can't place the words; their voices are beginning to blur together in a haze. Her eyes start to drift shut against the pounding in her head. She feels like she's floating outside of her body, hovering just outside of reach of her body. The only link she can feel is Raph's arms around her; a strong tie holding her to the physical world.

As darkness overcomes her, Raph's body moves around her, lifting her further into his arms and up off the floor. His words brush over her like a vanishing breeze.

"I've got her."

 _He's got me…he'll take care of me…he's got me…_ Ryu smiles despite her sudden exhaustion. He takes the stairs as carefully as he can, wary not to shake her, and shifts her so that her face is nestled protectively against his neck.

Her thoughts drift back to the dream world they had been stuck in just minutes ago, drifting back to the kiss he had placed on her cheek…

Her dry lips part, the remaining sound she can pull from her chest comes out in a raspy whisper, "You pervert."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 _Please let me know what y'all think so far. Mission "Snotty Nose Pics" was an utter failure...sorry! Lol_

 _-Ravyne_


	12. Chapter 11: 3-6 Race With The Demon

_We survived the hurricane! Well, I did. I haven't heard from Katt B. yet, but I'm sure the dragon will rear her ugly head soon. Hahaha!_

 _Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome!_

 _-Ravyne_

 _**DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT**_

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **11**

 **3-6: "Race With The Demon"**

"That qualifies as breaking news out here?"

"What does?"

Raph glances back over his shoulder as Venus and Ryu both lean against the back of the couch to watch the TV over Mikey and Leo's heads. The news report is being conveyed by a woman, relaying a warning for all watchers to remain at home and off the streets. Ryu's eyes narrow at the image of a "mad driver" running other drivers off the roads as if possessed.

 _What is wrong with people? It's like everyone in the world has gone insane lately_ , Ryu thinks to herself.

Venus nudges her arm, "Whatcha think?"

Ryu pops out of her thoughts, "What?"

The taller girl glares at her, narrowing her eyes, "The crazy driver. On the news report. On the TV."

"O-oh…right…TV. Yeah, bad."

Venus blinks. "Seriously," She replies, "That's it? Just…bad?"

Ryu turns towards the brunette in confusion and shrugs, "What?"

Venus groans and drops her head onto her arms before spinning away and strolling out of the room.

"What?!" Ryu calls after her.

"There's a crazy maniac running people off the road," Raph answers, "And all you can say is 'bad'."

"This is more than bad, Ryu," Leo adds.

She drops her eyes to her hands, watching her thumbs spin around each other absentmindedly as her thoughts spiral just as fast. Lately her thoughts have been too preoccupied to think of anything else or even come up with well thought out verbal responses to anything anyone has said to her.

Ever since returning from the dream realm and witnessing the hazy figure behind the blurry doorway, she's been having strange nightmares of the same experience. Over and over and over again. It doesn't seem to show any signs of stopping any time soon.

The front door opens and slams shut and everyone in the room jumps.

"Guys, come here quick!" April exclaims.

 _This doesn't sound good_ , Ryu thinks.

"It was him!" Donnie gasps the second they had relayed the news report to everyone in the kitchen. "That's the maniac that tried to trash us!"

"You ran into that nut?" Leo asks.

"More like he ran into us," Casey growls angrily. "Over and over! We got to get back out there and teach that guy a lesson!"

April rolls her eyes as she goes to drop her paper bag full of groceries on the dining room table. "Casey, it's not worth it. Just be glad we're all okay," she tells the hot head.

Venn comes in from upstairs and pauses behind Venus and Ryu who block the doorway. They both throw him looks as he steps up behind them and he nods. "You two heard anything?" he asks quietly.

"I've tried finding out some more about the daredevil online but I've got nothing more than what the new reporters have released," Ryu shakes her head.

"I'm gonna drive up to the local store and see if there's any gossip going around about him," Venus adds.

Venn and Ryu spin towards her in alarm.

She catches their shared looks, "Ugh! Okay, chill. I won't drive. Buncha paranoid babies."

"Your neck okay, Donnie?"

Ryu pulls out of their private conversation in time to see April step up behind Donnie and start rubbing his neck. Donnie throws a victorious look at Casey who grinds his teeth furiously. April watches the exchange but does nothing to quell it. She just rolls her eyes and keeps rubbing Donnie's neck as if nothing is happening.

Ryu clenches her jaw shut, fury rising in her blood again. _What the heck-!_

"Ryu, come on," Venn grabs the girl by the arm and leads her stiff form out the front door. "We need to come up with some kind of plan. We can't have some crazy guy putting innocent lives at risk."

"That's obvious. I would've thought you'd have decided on that a **while** ago," Venus gripes, walking up to join the conversation.

"You've always got to add a negative comment into the mix, don't you?" he growls.

"It's a part of my charm," she grins sarcastically.

"Ryu…"

Both stop arguing to look over at the quiet girl. Her face is flushed, eyes down cast, fists clenched at her sides.

"Ryu?" Venn repeats. "What's up?"

"Yeah, you look like you're about to hurl a rock," Venus crosses her arms and starts picking at her nails in boredom.

"Nothing," Ryu mumbles. She spins on her toe and heads for the barn where she's set up her own little 'lab' in the far corner away from Donnie's and Casey's shop. The lone computer that she pulled from the Kraang ship under the house still sits there silently, mocking her; the screen is black and empty.

She sits down in her creaky chair and leans back with a heavy sigh, staring at the strange machine thoughtfully. At one point, Donnie and Casey come in and start working on the old car they found sitting forgotten in the barn when they first got out here, but she ignores their constant arguing. After a few hours, they take the car out for a spin with Raph and Mikey to see if their speed adjustments are set right on the vehicle. Raph asks if she wants to come, but she declines, trying her best not to meet his eyes. There's been a wall of awkwardness between them since their trip to the dream realm.

As the silence settles back in, Ryu drops her head on the top of her work table. It hits the surface with a dull thud.

 _Forget about it, Ryu_ , she thinks, _It's not your place. Donnie can handle it himself._ She slides back from the table and goes over to the Kraang machine. She presses a key and the same thing happens as always.

The screen blinks, the machine whirls, the weird drive slides out of the port beside the screen. Again, Ryu just stares at it in wonder. Every time. She's faced with the same dilemma. It plagues her…

The barn door slams open, making her jump. "Can't believe those guys!" Casey growls.

Ryu follows the fuming teen with her eyes as he crosses the room and snatches up a tool from the nearby tool table. A few seconds later, the turtles are pushing the trashed vehicle back in; the poor old car looks like it's been through hades and back again.

"What the heck did you-?" she stops to a halt when Casey hurls a glare at her from across the room, shutting her off. Biting her tongue, Ryu sits back down in her chair and turns on her computer to bury herself in her work again.

"You guys call us when the car is fixed. We've got to get back out there, but this time we're going to have a plan. Raph, you're with me," Leo calls to his brother. Raph glances over at Ryu who has dropped her head into her hands, brushing her fingers through her hair; an obvious sign of stress.

A while later, Casey hits something under the car and he curses under his breath.

"So, find the problem with that clutch?" Donnie spits out.

"I found part of the problem," Casey snaps. Ryu glances back over her shoulder and watches the kid slide out from under the car with a white chicken in his hands. He growls as the bird flaps frantically and leaps away, "Hey, Mikey, keep your chickens out of the barn, man!"

Ryu sighs and shuts her computer down, exhausted already from their bickering. Outside, the wind stirs her hair as she pulls it out of the bun at the back of her head. It cascades down her shoulders and to her waist in straight locks. As she brushes it out with her fingers, her eyes shift over to the tree line. The sun peeks through to the forest floor and brightens the colors to near neon.

The peaceful scene calls to her; beckons her to leave her stressful world and to get lost in the serenity that is nature.

Ryu sighs again, _How I wish…_

"Hey."

She nearly bounds right out of her skin, "Yikes!"

Raph jumps a bit at her exclaim, but carries on towards her all the same, "What's with you?"

"You scared me," Ryu groans, sitting down on the log lying on the ground outside the barn, "Did you need something?"

He takes a seat next to her and turns his eyes away. Ryu too finds herself unable to meet his eyes, staring down at her fiddling thumbs. "Just…uh…Back when we, uh…" he stammers.

Ryu risks a glance up at him through the wall her hair has made between them. His sharp green eyes are closed tightly as if in a panic and his hands are clasped just as tight.

"Back when we were stuck in that other dimension…you know, with those beavers? I just um…wanted to…uh…"

"A…A-apologize-?"

"Yes!" he shouts quickly, making her jumps in surprise again. "Yeah, sorry. That's…yeah, that's…that's it."

He shoots straight up off the log and hurries stiffly across the yard and back into the house. Ryu watches him go in astonishment, baffled that they have both come to a point like this. Her chest tightens as she drops her eyes to the ground.

How would they ever get past something like this?

* * *

"I can't believe this," Ryu mutters under her breath.

"Oh, chill, maybe he's just out to lunch or something," Venus rolls her eyes at the girl's grumbling.

Ryu throws her a glare, "At four in the afternoon?"

"He could've just closed down early. Maybe he's sick or something."

"He lives in the back of the building! His car is still here!"

Venus groans and props her hands on her hips, "Well, excuse me. I'm not buddy-buddy with this loser. How the heck would I know the inner workings of his life?"

"First off," Ryu snaps, "Roy is not a loser. He-."

"He left the Order. Who in their right mind would leave the Order?" Venus cuts her off.

"He didn't leave! He retired to be with the woman he fell in love with. How is that wrong?" Ryu turns from the locked door of Roy's auto shop and storms back towards the van with Venus hot on her heels.

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with that, but when his wife died he had a choice to come back and he didn't. Something about him is messed up," Venus argues.

Ryu slams her door shut and grips the steering wheel tightly, "Secondly, I don't know the inner workings of anyone's life. Roy has just always been a good friend and when I heard that he had opened his own shop, I wanted to come check it out. His wife was the one who was nice enough to show me around. She was so happy to have a place of her own. They had even started fixing up a room for their child…" Ryu trails off, remembering the foggy memory of the joyous smile that had taken over the soon-to-be mother's face when she had showed off the brightly painted pink room. They had been getting ready to welcome their baby girl into the world…when the doctor's diagnostic had crushed their dreams and their lives. Roy's young wife had left this world before the child could be safely brought into it.

"Wait…"

Ryu comes out of her thoughts and glances over at the passenger.

Venus's face has fallen, her usually bored expression softening into something else. Ryu blinks in surprise; the girl looks almost sad.

"I thought…he just lost his wife. No one told me about his unborn."

"That's because…Roy never told anyone."

The dark skinned girl looks up again, "Then how did you know?"

She drops her eyes to her knuckles, her fingers loosening from the steering wheel, and then moves to crank the van. It backfires in response as she pops it into gear, "I figured it out."

Static from the radio sitting in the cup holders between them interrupts their conversation and Venus picks it up hesitantly, pressing the call button, "What's up?"

"We're in some hot water over here, I might need both of you," Venn's voice answers.

"Where are you at?"

Ryu glances at her as her hand hovers over the gear shift.

"On the back road leading to Roy's shop."

Before Venus can answer, Ryu is shifting the gears and tearing out of the driveway. She knows exactly where they are; the back road to Roy's shop is winding and dangerous. There's only one reason they would be up there.

 _Casey has run off again after that speed demon,_ she thinks.

* * *

"Uh…what's going on?" Venus asks as she slams the door shut of the van. "I thought you guys were in trouble. We sped over here, quite recklessly I might add, and instead of finding you people in turmoil, you're jumping around like a bunch of baboons."

Ryu pauses mid-step towards the group, eyeing Venus worriedly at her rant.

Venn spins around from his place between the others and grins sheepishly, "Well, you should've sped a bit more recklessly. We finished without you."

"Gee, thanks for leaving some fun for me," Venus gripes, smacking him on the back of the head, "I could use some destructive fun right about now."

Ryu lowers her eyes guiltily, _Maybe I shouldn't have said anything._

"So, whatever, fill me in on what happened," Venus hangs over Venn's shoulder, showing some interest in Donnie and Casey who are chatting excitedly about their recent victory.

Leaning against the front of the van Ryu smiles over at Donnie and Casey, glad to see that they're not fighting for once. Thinking this, she's reminded of the reason that they are constantly fighting and her eyes instantly find the red head in question.

What she finds send a bolt of fury though her. April leans against Raph, her arm wrapped around the back of his shoulders.

 _How many does she have to-?!_ , the thought doesn't finish in her mind before her powers flare in response to her unbound emotions. Her foot kicks forward, heel digging sharply into the dirt, and the ground shifts, ripping frontward at a lightning speed.

The attack trips April's feet and sends her sprawling backward onto her backside.

Venn and Venus both react first, Venus shouting out her outrage, "Ryu, what was that?!"

But the girl is gone, racing off the side of the road and leaping over the guard rail. Her feet hit the nearly ninety degree angle incline and the earth welcomes her, breaking off to catch her and slide her down the hill. She vanishes into the dark woods below.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 _All reviews and advice are welcome!_

 _-Ravyne_


	13. Chapter 12: 3-6(Part 2) Raph

_So this chapter was really hard to edit because Katt B. wrote it when she was sick. For some reason when she gets a cold, her fingers don't keep up to well with her brain and her brain doesn't stay too well on the train of thought. Lol!_

 _Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome!_

 _-Ravyne_

 _**DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT**_

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **12**

 **3-6.2: "Raph"**

Another branch comes flying towards him but Raph ducks just in time, abandoning Mikey to face the incoming _slap_.

"Ow!"

Raph chuckles under his breath as his younger brother falls backwards to the ground.

"Dude, that was rude," Venus glares, taking a step up behind Mikey to help him back to his feet.

"And you're crude," Raph shoots back.

"If you both don't stop right now, you're going to be screwed," Venn warns from the front of the group.

"You just got chewed!" Mikey adds with a cheer.

"Ugh, you people are so prude," Donnie rolls his eyes.

"Stop it!" Casey whines, grabbing his ears.

They come to the planned clearing and Raph's eyes find her immediately. Ryu stands atop a giant boulder, eyes closed and hands outstretched casually to her sides with her palms up. She's practically glowing from her power, rocks of smaller sizes floating around her in a circle as she stretches it through the air towards them.

"Leo, I hope this spot is okay?" Venn asks as he drops the bag next to his feet.

"Works fine for me, everyone start stretching," Leo calls out. They all spread out to do just that before their training session begins; Raph sitting down next to Mikey a few paces away from Venn and Venus.

"Go over there and get her down," Venn whispers under his breath to her, just loud enough to Raph to catch his words.

"No way," Venus argues, "I'm not becoming a pawn in her drama. I don't know if you've noticed, but she's been acting weird lately."

"Yes, I have thank you, but right now she needs to put it aside. We have a job to do."

"And you need to understand that when Ryu starts acting weird, it's best to keep your distance until she sorts it out. Besides…" Venus trails off as she glances over at Ryu's still form on the boulder, "This 'weird' streak…is probably going to last longer than a tantrum."

Venn follows her gaze, "What do you mean?"

"Remember that night…when we had taken out that alien that had tried to come across as April's mom?"

"Obviously," Venn rolls his eyes, "Ryu had changed and you had to stop her. What of it?"

"Afterwards, when she said she needed to be alone and went outside to take a breather…well…" Venus lowers her eyes to the ground, fiddling with a piece of grass between her fingers.

Raph watches the deep confusion play out on the girl's face as Venn grips her shoulder gently.

"Tell me, Venus," he asks.

"I don't know, maybe I'm just being paranoid."

"You're ruled by the wind element, Venus, so you know when a change happens. That's not paranoia."

Venus sighs and glances back at Ryu, "When she came back in, something seemed different about her; something _off_. Something dark was there, attached to her almost."

"By attached, do you mean-?"

"I mean attached," Venus stops him, "Like a parasite; it was small but still there."

Raph's gaze shifts to Ryu worriedly. He has noticed that she's been acting weird lately, but he's sure it's just because of his crazy move back in the dream world. The memory suddenly makes the back of his neck warm and he stands up hastily to his feet, "Enough stretching! Let's train already!"

He hates this feeling. Nervous, unsure, wobbly. It's driving him nuts. He's not sure how to handle it at all.

"Alight, Raph, chill," Leo chuckles, "You and Donnie are up first."

And so it began, all of them taking turns to spar one-on-one and then in double teams until on Donnie and Casey were the last ones who hadn't fought each other.

"Just watch and learn, Red. I'll show you how a real man fights," Casey smirks as he draws out a hockey stick from across his back.

"If she's going to learn from anyone, it's going to be from a real ninja," Donnie argues.

Their weapons move, clashing against each other with a loud _clack_. Across the clearing, Ryu's finger twitches and a floating stone to her left toddles a bit in mid-air.

There's another loud _clack_.

"Just face it, Donnie, I'm better when it comes to fighting with a stick and you know it," Casey laughs.

"Sure you are," Donnie agrees sarcastically with a roll of his eyes, "Against weaklings like the purple dragons maybe."

Casey swings his hockey stick with an angry shout and Donnie blocks it easily. _Clack!_

"I've taken down way bigger than those small fry since then and you know it! Me and April have been sparring a lot too," Casey pauses to smirk at the turtle, "All that alone time together…I've hardly seen her around you at all."

Ryu's jaw locks as her teeth clench tightly. The boulders she's balancing in the air all burst into dust and float to the ground in a fine, dry mist. Everyone jumps at the explosion, flinching back a few paces.

The wind picks up in a quick gust, blowing Ryu's hair up from its place tied on her left shoulder and flipping it up in front of her face as she spins around to face them. Her eyes are almost glowing from her anger, a slight tremor rushing under the earth below their feet. Her chest rises and falls quickly in frustration as her lips part.

"You know, I change my mind. I'm in the ring next," Ryu lifts her hand to point a finger directly at Casey nearly ten feet away, "I want to fight the wannabe."

"Wannabe?!" Casey yelps, the tip of his hockey stick hitting the ground.

Ryu drops her hand, glowering down at the younger kid, and she continues as if he hadn't spoken, "Someone needs to put your mouth back in its place."

Casey growls under his breath and drops his mask over his face, lifting his stick into both hands as he takes a stance.

"Let's see what you're really made of, child," Ryu's glare narrows as she drops to the ground. The second her feet hit the ground, she pushes out her power and it rumbles out across the area, tearing up the ground in a perfect circle between them all. The circle caves in, all the loose ground crumbling to dust to the bottom of a shallow pit, but five columns of rock are left standing in the wake—four in a circle with the final one in the center.

Venn and Venus share a look before he pulls out the canister of water he had brought with him from the house and digs out a piece of ice from inside. He taps the ice on the side of his gun that he pulls from his belt and the metal begins to glow a frosty blue as it starts to mutate. When it finishes, the metal is a neon blue, the barrel is longer and narrows almost to a point like an icicle, and the hammer is morphed like a snowflake. Taking aim, Venn blasts the single bullet at the bottom of the hole.

Frosty wind and fog explode into the air, making them all cover their faces quickly against the blast, but when it fades they find the entire hole filled with solid ice.

Ryu taps the toe of her boot on the ground behind her as she glares over the icy surface at Casey, "I'll make this easy for you. We'll play on your turf."

"Don't do me any favors," Casey growls.

"You want me to use my powers?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

Casey's glare shifts to thought, "Uh…"

"Didn't think so," Ryu steps back so that she's situated in a sideways stance on top of one of the lone stepping stones in the middle of the ice and folds her hands leisurely behind her back. "Let's see what you've got, puck-head."

Casey pops out the blades on the bottom of his shoes, catching everyone off guard since they all thought he just had roller blades, and he flashes across the ice in a blur, "Bring it!"

Ryu narrows her eyes and takes a deep, centering breath, feeling herself slow down and focus; entering her battle-mode is getting easier and easier ever since her run-in with the 'Finger'. Donnie had explained to her that she had seemed different when she had faced him. And, of course, Ryu doesn't remember any of it.

The second her heart slows a beat below normal, her power stirs and reaches out towards her, but she calms it back. This battle she wouldn't use it. It's not like she'll need it anyway.

The corner of her mouth twitches as Casey swings his stick down on her head. She takes a step to the side and it hits the center of the earth stepping stone in the ice, not two inches from her toes.

"What the-?!" Casey starts to exclaim, but Ryu kicks him in the rear unhurriedly and he goes head first into the ice.

"Ryu!" April scoffs.

Ryu shifts a sideways glare at the red head, making the younger girl flinch, before turning back to the boy climbing up off the ground. He swings his fist at her legs and she leaps back out of the way, landing on the next rock platform nearby to wait for his next attack. This time instead of wasting energy to breathe, she simply stuffs her hands into her pockets and waits him out, trying not to roll her eyes at his slow speed. This time, instead of side stepping his overhead attack, Ryu leaps up to dodge his low swing at her ankles and flips over him; her hands grip his shoulders as she goes and she twists him backward. With a grunt, Ryu pulls him up and flips him backward over her head, slamming his back heavily onto the icy surface of the battle ground.

Casey cries out as the ice cracks under him and curls up on his side against the onslaught of the attack.

April shouts for the fight to stop and pushes past Ryu to rush to Casey's side. Ryu glares down at the red head who comforts the adolescent. "What is wrong with you, Ryu?!" April yells at the older girl, "Why are you acting out like this all of a sudden?!"

Ryu narrows her eyes, feeling her anger stir her power, but she holds back her true words and gives April the only thing she deserves, "Go find a mirror."

* * *

Venn leans against the porch railing, staring out at the barn with a hard look in his eyes. Beside him on the steps, Venus is busy tearing into yet another lollypop—making it her fifth one today.

"Venn, stop worrying about every little thing," Venus mumbles around her mouthful of candy.

He sighs and glares down at her, "If I don't, who will? Certainly not you; you couldn't care less about anything. And Ryu certainly won't because she's too stubborn to think half the time before she acts."

As if she hadn't even heard him speak, Venus continues, "Ryu will be fine. You know she gets like this sometimes. She'll come down off her high cloud and if she don't then I'll kick her ass down off it myself."

Venn bites back the words that had started to fill his mouth the second his mind registers her words. _Off her high cloud…These recent actions don't seem like a high cloud_ , Venn thinks, his eyes drifting back over to the barn where Ryu had disappeared to not an hour before. _Maybe this isn't a high cloud…but who's to say…that we will be able to get her down off it?_

"Raph!"

The turtle jumps from his place by the front door, a post he'd taken to eavesdrop on the two on the front porch, and spins around as April comes stomping out of the kitchen.

"I called for dinner ten minutes ago," the red-head complains, "Can you please go get your brothers inside now?"

Raph rolls his eyes and heads out the front door, trying his best to seem like he hadn't been eavesdropping in on their conversation as he passes between Venus and Venn on the porch. Leo and Mickey are sparing in the yard—if you call Leo continuously dropping his younger brother to the ground over and over again sparing. He calls them in before heading into the barn where Donnie and Casey are working on their hunk of junk junkyard car.

"April is calling us in for dinner," Raph tells them, cutting off their argument about something he really doesn't care to know about. Casey jumps up off the floor under the car and he shoves his hands into the pocket of his sweatshirt as he stomps out of the barn; Donnie follows behind a bit slower in a similar mood.

Hesitantly, Raph shifts his gaze over to the other side of the room where Ryu sits at her desk silently. Her whole body is stiff, leaning onto the table top and staring intently at the flickering computer screen. _Just do it, Raph_ , he tells himself, _Just go!_

Before his mind can catch up with his feet, Raph goes to her side and pulls out a small work stool to sit beside her, "Hey."

"Hi," Ryu answers without looking up at him.

Her answer is too short, too cut off. His eyes narrow worriedly, "So…what's up?"

"The floor."

"Okay, Ryu, spill. What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Sewer apples!"

Ryu jumps as he leaps up.

"I know there's something going on. I've overheard your friends talking about it. They know you better than your own family or do you even consider us that?"

The words hit her in the chest like a brick, knocking the breath right out of her; turning her blood cold. Her eyes shift up from the table to meet his, "That's not-."

"True?" Raph cuts her off. "Then prove us wrong."

Ryu leaps to her feet and turns on him, "You know, for someone who is supposedly 'family', you sure are being dictatorial."

Raph faces her challenge, putting his face close to hers, "Well, someone's got to be with you."

They both blink and pull away from each other.

"Uh," Raph mumbles, scratching his head as a hint of red tinges his face, "W-what I meant…is…I-I mean…I….uh…"

Ryu blinks, swallowing heavily, _Someone's…got to…be with…_ She's unable to even finish the words in her thoughts. They just seemed too…

Raph abruptly turns away and heads for the door, "Just get inside or we're eating without you." For a second, she remains frozen in place, unable to move. Her heart hammers in her ears like thunder from a storm, which is exactly what her insides feel like at the moment. Her knees are shaking to the point of almost dropping her back into her chair….but she doesn't allow it.

Ryu pushes her chair out of her way and races off after him; he's halfway across the yard when she sees him from her place in the barn doorway. His head is lowered, eyes obviously to the ground, fists tightened at his sides. A smile pulls at her face.

Her body pulls her forward into a breathless race across the lawn, picking up speed with each step. Her hand reaches out, fingers trembling in hesitation. She's not even sure what she's doing. She just knows that she had a strong urge to hold his hand, to apologize for everything she's said and done. Ryu's fingers come mere inches from his wrist…a few centimeters…

 **MINA!**

That same voice, the unknown scream, slams into her soul, pierces her ears, shudders her heart to a quivering halt. She spins on her heel, breathing laboriously, and scans the yard behind her for the source. Only shifting blades of grass in the wind move to create a soft whisper, but nothing more.

Her eyes narrow suspiciously, _Where is that voice coming from?! Who is it?!_

"Ryu?"

She jumps and spins back around. Raph gazes back at her worriedly.

"What's wrong?"

Ryu just stares at him for a moment, then looks back expecting to find the one who spoke so loudly before, "N…nothing…I-I'm…um…"

"Ryu?"

She turns back to him, pausing, but smiles weakly shaking her head, "N-no, nothing. I'm fine."

Raph's worry doesn't leave his face for a long moment but then he reaches out and lets a small smile pull at the corner of his mouth, "Come on."

Ryu's chest fills with warmth out of nowhere when he holds out his hand to her; she gazes down at his palm and then glances up into those intense green eyes. The wind swirls her hair as she smiles back and takes his offered hand.

They walk slowly back to the house. Side by side.

Ryu can't help but stare down at their hands, so different, so many worlds apart, and yet the only thing she can seem to think is, _Warm, safe…home._

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 _Please let me know what y'all think so far! All reviews and advice are welcome! We love hearing from you guys. :)_

 _-Ravyne_


	14. Chapter 13: 3-7 Eyes of the Chimera

**So...I'm thankfully not blind or deaf or mute, so this chapter was super difficult to write from a deaf person's point-of-view. Please let me know what you think and if you see any mistakes.**

 **Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome!**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **13**

 **3-7: "Eyes of the Chimera"**

Okay, Ryu had expected a wait, but this is ridiculous. She sits backwards in her chair, resting her arms crossed over the back of it and watches silently a little ways away from Donnie and April as he hooks her up to some machine that sits on her head. This isn't going anywhere fast so she gets up and pats Mikey on the shoulder as she leaves out the barn door. The bright sunlight makes her blink until her eyes adjust before she can locate everyone else out in the yard sparing.

Ryu smiles over at Casey who gets tripped up by Raph who has kicked his knees out from under him. Venn comes to her side a second later, nudging her out of her daydream.

"Hmm?"

"Stop staring at your boyfriend. Let's get to work," Venn rolls his eyes.

Ryu groans, "He's not my boyfriend. He's just…"

"I saw you two holding hands the other day when you two were coming in. You two are sooooo dating."

Ryu snaps her hand up and smushes his lips together to stop his voice, "Okay, one, don't ever say ' _sooooo_ ' again. Two, tell anyone what you saw and I'll bury you six feet in the ground."

Venn lifts his hands in surrender and she releases him, "Would you like to spar?"

"Sure, I need to clear my thoughts," Ryu replies.

"Clear them," Venn throws her a playful grin, glancing off at Raph, "Or distract them?"

She doesn't return it, her face going stern. Ryu twists her foot and watches him sink into the ground, burying him in dirt all the way up to his neck. Up on the porch, Venus bursts into hysteria slapping her thigh, stopping all action across the yard.

"Ryu, I was joking. Get me out of here," Venn coughs.

"What's the matter, Venn? Afraid of a few little fire ants?" Ryu teases as Venus comes up to lean an arm over the younger girl's shoulder.

"Wait, are there fire ants around here?" Venus asks seriously, pausing mid-hysteria to turn a curious look at Ryu.

"We're not going to do that."

"And you are no fun," Venus grumbles, matching her tone, "Come on, I need to get him back for that stunt he pulled on me last winter."

"Are you still sour about that? Geez, can't you take a joke?" Venn growls as he struggles against the hold of the earth.

"Can't **you** take a joke?" Venus lets out a high pitched whistle at the ground and the sound echoes through the air until it cracks against the ground, splitting the earth near his head. He jerks away from the attack.

"That was not a joke!" Venn snaps.

"Neither was locking me in the closet with Hitler!"

"H-Haku…" Ryu corrects hesitantly.

"His personality said otherwise," Venus growls back through her teeth. Ryu takes the hint in her tone and takes a step back. Everyone else has gathered around behind them, nearly making her step on Leo's toes as she backs up. Venus begins to circle Venn's head on the ground. "Alright, Ryu. Let him up."

Ryu chews on her lip, leaning back so that she can pass a silent word to Leo behind her, "Do you think April would miss her farm house if I moved it two miles to the north?"

"Probably…" he answers slowly with a worried look.

Ryu sighs heavily.

"Ryu, any day now," Venus calls over to her again impatiently.

"This is…going to…most likely end badly," Ryu twists her foot again and the earth kicks Venn straight up into the air, landing him steadily on his feet so that he can face Venus fully. Ryu then brings her hands to her sides and then pulls her fists up, bending her elbows at a ninety degree angle, and the earth under their group shifts. A second later, they're lifted nearly ten feet into the air, giving them a great look out on the battle about to happen below.

They all throw looks at Ryu and she smiles sheepishly with a shrug, "Better to be safe than sorry."

Venus makes the first move, racing forward and drawing out one of her three short blades. She swings at his torso but he vanishes in a blur appearing behind her long enough to get ahold of her arm and flip her over his shoulder, slamming her into the ground on her back. The ground cracks under the pressure.

Ryu winces at the pain that sings out from the earth and Raph touches her elbow from behind her. Venn gets a grab on Venus so many times from that point on, throwing her into the ground more than one can count, but Ryu knows that Venn is holding back more than anyone else would know. If he was going at full force, no one would be able to even see him.

Venus is about to back hand him as he appears in a flash behind her, but he ducks and kicks her feet out from under her. She drops to her backside again, leaving her open for him to press his boot to her stomach.

"Yield," he orders.

"Whatever!" Venus groans against the weight of his foot.

He lets her up and Ryu takes that as the signal that it's safe to let everyone off the rock, but the second she presses the earth back together…

"AGH!"

The hair on the back of her neck stands on end and every fiber of her being screams at her to duck. She falls to a knee, recognizing the electricity in the air, and covers her head. The shock wave hits literally a second later and Ryu is hit with a wall of psychic power; the earth screams around her and the sound is like a siren that could shatter glass. Her heart pounds in her ears cutting out all the sounds of the world around her until the siren cuts out even that. It builds and builds until Ryu fears that her mind is going to break under the pressure.

But then, not a few agonizing moments later, the siren starts to die down and her pounding heart doesn't thunder so loudly through her skull. There's a tap on her shoulder, but it turns urgent before Ryu can even look up.

Raph is shaking her shoulders, yelling at her obviously, with a deep worried expression on his face. Ryu's eyebrows draw together in confusion.

No words are coming out of his mouth.

Venn joins him at his side, waving a hand in front of her face and she shoves it away in irritation, but what happens next really shocks her. Ryu opens her mouth and snaps at him to bug off…but her voice is silent…non-existent. She tries to speak again. Once more, nothing.

Raph shakes her shoulder again and she shifts her gaze to his slowly. He's talking to her, his lips are moving. No words.

 _Oh, God, no!_ , Ryu reaches up, hands shaking in horror, and touches the sides of her head over her ears. She hears nothing. No wind, no birds, no breathing, no heart beat…no earth song…

She's deaf.

 _No, God, please no!_ Her eyes widen in terror, tears stinging the edges of her eyes.

Chaos breaks loose around her.

A great, silent, wind knocks them all over and Ryu can feel the mute earth beneath her tremble. She looks up in alarm at the great beast who has dropped into the yard; a mutant if ever she saw one.

Something slams into her side, knocking the wind out of her, and she's pressed into the ground. Immediately after, a great wind whips dangerously over her and she catches the end of the mutant's tail lashing out above her. It's a second later that she realizes that it was Raph who had knocked her to the ground; crouched over her protectively. He helps her sit up, the action bringing her close to his chest, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. He's trying to say something to her but she still hears nothing. Her face falls in defeat and she shakes her head as she points to her ears. His expression becomes confused.

Someone touches her other shoulder—Venus. She moves her lips slowly; Ryu tries to decipher her silent speech.

 _Can you hear me?_

Ryu's expression falls and she shakes her head no. Venus and Raph share looks of horror, but their moment is cut short when the mutant beast attacks again. It swings its tail again and Raph snatches Ryu up into his arms before it can break open their heads; the ground splits open as it bashes the ground where they had once been, spraying bits of rocks off in all directions. Ryu coughs, her chokes silent to her ears, and rolls onto her side. A warm hand brushes over the top of her head and she looks up. Raph is saying something to her but his lips are moving much too fast for her to keep up with.

He presses gently on her shoulder, a clear signal to keep down, and then he jumps up to join his brother's in the fight against the creature. Donnie and Mikey have appeared out of the barn, April stumbling to a stop near the porch next to Leo, and they rush to help out too.

Ryu watches on from her place on the ground, feeling more helpless than she has in a long time. She can feel her pulse in her temples, but she still can't hear it. Her knees are shaking as terribly as her arms. Her whole body, spirit, heart feel out of alignment. She threads her fingers into the grass, digging her fingernails into the soft dirt. Nothing calls out to her.

The song of the earth no longer beats in time with her own; an overwhelming sense of loneliness weighs down on her, thickening the quiet within her. There's a trembling below her body and she barely has time to sit up and discover why before the giant beast is swinging its tail again, the blow knocking her back and tearing her through the tree line. Branches and bushes crunch and snap under her weight, slashing at her exposed skin as she goes flying by, and then she slams into the ground with a few good rolls. When she finally comes to a stop, her whole body feels like she's been hit by a bus…or two.

Whole body as limp as a noodle, Ryu drops her head back against a tree root to rest until the vertigo can pass. A brief moment later, a terrible wind shoots through the trees, stirring her hair, and above she spots something big flying away above the tops of the trees. The giant oaks and pines rock as the wings beat a heavy wind down into their branches.

Ryu watches the trees sway in the gust, feeling like she's floating outside of her body. For a long moment, she just allows the new feeling of the eerie silence to swallow her whole as she tries to get her bearings. None of it seems real to her; it's like she's trapped inside herself, blocked off from the rest of the world around her. Ryu reaches out for the earth, the rocks, the pebbles, but finds nothing. She feels like she's literally been cut off from everything.

Her body is now her prison.

* * *

"So what are we going to do?" Venus snaps, "Venn is down, Ryu is missing and deaf, April is blind, and you're on a bum leg. Let's face it, your brothers are screwed."

"Venus, shut up," Venn barks from his place on the porch. He has an arm around his side, holding the bandages to his torso as Venus ties them in place. "I may be out of commission now, but I'll be back up in a matter of hours. From what I've seen of your brothers, they can handle themselves until then. For now, we need to find Ryu and regroup."

"We may not have that much time," April cuts in as she wraps her arms around her stomach. They all turn their attention to the blind girl as she continues, "I think I know why the Chimera took them…I feel…really hungry. Like…Mikey hungry."

Venus glances around blankly, "And that means?"

"That means, we have to leave now," Leo answers, "Venus, you stay here with Venn and see that he's taken care of. We'll go after my brothers."

"But what about Ryu?" Venn gaps.

"If I know Ryu, she's too stubborn to get into trouble in her state," April replies, rubbing her forehead.

Venus eyes the red head warily, catching the deeper tone in her voice. Things had become tense between her and Ryu lately. Too tense from Venus's point of view.

"You two go, I'll watch Venn and keep an eye out for Ryu. I can see if I can locate her spiritually. She couldn't have been knocked away that far," Venus ties off the bandages and hands Venn back his shirt so that he can pull it on. She stands up and waves them off, "Don't worry, I can handle things here."

"But Venus, Ryu is-."

"Shut it, Venn," she warns. "You'll reopen that wound if you keep wasting your breath."

"How does that have anything to do with-?"

"Shut. Up."

Leo glances worriedly at April before he grabs his wooden crutch and she helps him to stand. Together they walk across the yard and into the woods.

"Venus, you know we need to find Ryu first. We stand more of a chance together as a group than apart as you've just split us up as. Also, you just sent a guy with a bum leg off into the woods with a blind girl. How is that not a recipe for disaster?"

Venus turns and sits back down on the steps next to Venn, staring off thoughtfully after Leo and April, "This needs to happen. I have to push that guy."

Venn throws her a look that clearly says she's gone crazy, but then notices the change behind those light brown eyes. The tiny gold flakes scattered around those irises are dancing wildly and he instantly knows that she's planning something, no matter how blank her face is. "What are you planning?"

"I know for a fact that there's nothing wrong with his leg. It's all in his head. This is something he needs to do; maybe it will push him out of his comfort zone and finally help him to see that," Venus answers.

Venn stares at her for a long moment in thought, really surprised at how much she's grown in her short time here out in the country. He remembers watching her and Ryu grow up at the Dragon sanctuary in the mountains. She had quickly turned into a strong willed, out-spoken girl, shaving half her head and piercing her ears and eyebrow in a rush to show her independence. But no matter her rough exterior, he and Ryu had quickly figured out just how soft of a person she really is on the inside, showing so much care and worry for the others at the sanctuary. Many people thought of her "caring" nature as harsh and mean, but Venn knows that that is just her way of showing affection.

He smiles and wraps an arm around her shoulders to ruffle her hair. She fights to throw his heavy arm off of her, "Gaa, get off!"

"Get to work finding Ryu then," Venn chuckles, pinching at her cheeks and pulling them out until she threatens to bite him.

"I would if you'd get off!" she shoves him away and scoots up to the top step not only to distance herself from his annoying teasing, but so that she can cross her legs and close her eyes to concentrate. Almost instantly, her breathing slows and her body calms and Venn knows that she's off in her spirit somewhere.

It would be impossible for him to tease her now. All he can do now is wait. Venn turns and faces off into the woods, silently hoping that his other comrade is okay. Ryu has always been so grounded and spiritually connected to her power. So much so that even the Dragons were impressed with the connection that she gained so quickly.

 _I just hope she can find that connection once again_ , Venn thinks.

* * *

Stopping, Ryu sits down next to a tree and rests her head against its rough bark. What she wouldn't give to hear a sound, anything. A bird's song, a pinecone falling. Heck, even a snake hiss would be welcoming at this point. But there's just nothing.

Sighing once more and standing to her feet, Ryu keeps walking and looking around. Right about now, she's wishing that she had spent more time out here walking the woods and memorizing as much as she could. Now that she's out here and not able to hear anything to use as direction points, it's near impossible to navigate anything. A boulder appears in the next clearing and she climbs up to the top to see if the height would allow her any aid whatsoever. Just endless forest in all directions no matter where she turns; not a comforting notion to someone who can't hear any sound at all when they once relied on such a thing.

Ryu sighs and sits down on the top of the boulder to rest, sprawling her legs out and leaning back on her hands. _This could be a problem_ , she thinks.

Something slams into the side of her hand and makes her jump three feet in the air, tripping off the boulder and falling face first into the dirt. Sitting up with a groan, Ryu spits out a mouthful of grass and gravel before rolling over onto her backside. Leo has his back to the boulder, trying desperately to keep April, who is weirdly trying to snap at his face, away from him.

She cocks her head to the side in confusion, raising an eyebrow, _What the heck is going on?!_

Ryu leaps to her feet and rushes to Leo's side, slipping an arm between their faces so that April's teeth clamp down on her instead. With a free grip on the possessed girl, she shoves her away and the red-head flies backwards and falls down on her backside.

 _OW!_ , Ryu grips her arm where April's teeth had bit into her skin, wincing at the sharp pain. The flesh isn't broken, keeping her precious blood in her system, but darn if it isn't welted up in red marks.

Leo grabs her shoulder and pulls her around so that he can see her arm too just as April stands back up. They both stiffen and eye her. The red-head raises her hands in surrender, saying something that Ryu still can't hear; she focuses on her mouth in an attempt to try and read her words. Leo ends up having to give her a thumbs up.

He says something to her slowly and it takes her a second, but Ryu pieces it together after a moment, _Can you really not hear?_

Ryu shakes her head and shrugs in defeat. Leo nods. He and April start up a conversation, leaving Ryu to watch on from the side lines to try and keep up. After a moment, April starts pacing and then spins to glare and point at a tree. She and Leo raise an eyebrow in confusion and he calls to the red-head to get her attention from the tree to him.

They say something else to each other and then nod with determined looks; Ryu's heart drops in her chest. The feeling of uselessness hits her again as she watches them from her place on the side lines. When Leo finally turns towards her, her eyes have dropped to the ground. He places his hands on her shoulders and talks slowly again.

This time, Ryu struggles a bit, _We are going after the others. They need us. Will you help?_

Ryu drops her eyes again, motioning towards her ears and then raising her hands with a shake from the wrists. She tries to speak again to tell him that she couldn't use her power, but she's not sure how it sounds. He raises an eyebrow and Ryu drops her eyes in defeat; obviously she sounds terrible.

Leo places a hand on her shoulder and she looks up; he smiles at her assuredly. Ryu goes against her better judgement and decides to tag along with whatever plan they have decided on…no matter how useless she would be. They all turn and head deeper into the woods, April and Ryu both helping Leo limp along. Not long afterwards, they arrive at the base of a mountain; it's not much of a mountain but it counts. Ryu's seen bigger.

April and Leo start arguing again, leaving Ryu to stand on the sidelines again, but they eventually finish with Leo pulling out his grappling hook and long rope attached to it.

Ryu eyes it thoughtfully, _Guess we'll be climbing. Great._

Leo spins the rope for a second before tossing it up and letting the hook soar through the air until it lands with a clang on the rocks higher up. He gives the rope a sharp tug and it catches safely on an anchor out of their sight. It doesn't look too promising, but Ryu helps Leo and April up the rope before her. With one last deep breath, Ryu follows them up and they start their climb. They have a few slips, nearly loosing April once on the way up, but they help each other up the mountain side until they reach a ledge overlooking the forest below them. This high up, Ryu gets a closer look at the clouds above them and feels like she can almost reach up and touch them.

Someone taps her shoulder and Ryu turns to find Leo holding up his phone for her to see; there's something written out on the screen. She reads it quickly, _The others were supposed to be here, but they aren't. Start searching._

Ryu nods and heads out, skirting carefully around the edge of the cliff in her exploration. There's suddenly another familiar, great force of wind that knocks her to her knees. Ryu glances up just in time to find to find the giant bird/beast mutant screeching silently in the air above her.

 _Holy…_

The beast dives at the mountain side, but its targets are further back where she came from so she's sure that the others are in trouble. Her feet hit the mountain hard, legs pumping as she climbs back the way she had come as fast as she can. The rocks suddenly fall out from under her foot at the edge of a ledge as she rounds a corner and Ryu slides, free falling through the air down a steep, dark hole to her death.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all reviews, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	15. Chapter 14: 3-7(Part 2) Raph

**Time to see what happens. Here's the next chapter. Enjoy.**

 **Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome!**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **14**

 **3-7.2: "Raph"**

"Ryu!"

"Watch out!"

"We've got to grab her!"

Ryu's body comes tumbling down the shaft towards the boiling waters of the geyser below, twisting the rising steam into intricate patterns in the air with her body as she falls through it. Raph's eyes follow her as she drops like dead weight through the mist faster and faster with each passing second and his heart nearly stops in his chest. He jumps up, kicks off the wall, and flies through the air to catch her mid-fall, cradling her body snuggly against his chest. He kicks off the opposite wall and flips back towards the ledge where his brothers and Casey stand. The second he lands, Donnie is rushing to his side to check Ryu's condition. She's rubbing her forehead and looking around in a daze when he takes her hand carefully to check her pulse; it's racing through the roof.

"Ryu, hey, are you okay?" Donnie inquires. "Ryu? Ryu?!"

Raph slips a finger under Ryu's chin and tilts her head back so that she's looking into his eyes. Her gaze is glazed over for a second, blank, but then she stares back at him in confusion. "Hey, can you hear me? Are you okay?" Raph asks, mouthing the words slowly. Her pause is brief but her expression falls and she shakes her head. Raph sighs and helps her to her feet carefully, "She's still deaf. Something happened back at the farmhouse and now her hearing is gone."

Donnie rubs his chin in thought, "That's weird…April lost her sight…"

"Huh?" Mikey chimes.

The boys turns towards the bubbling water as it rumbles a bit louder and they all share a worried look. "We need to find a way out of here quick or we're going to be boiled alive," Donnie looks up at the top of the hole, "And I forgot my grappling hook."

"Some ninja," Raph rolls his eyes angrily.

Donnie takes a hold of Ryu's shoulders so that she's looking at him and he mouths the words slowly, "Did you come here alone?"

Ryu shakes her head.

"Leo?" Donnie continues and she nods, but then holds up two fingers. Donnie furrows his eyebrows, "Two?"

Ryu scratches her head in thought for a second and then opens her mouth, surprising them all, "A-afril. Afril? Ap-." She frantically presses the heels of her palms into her eyes and then runs her fingers through her hair. Raph recognizes the sign of stress.

"April," Raph cuts in, "She's saying April."

"April's with Leo?!" Donnie freaks out, grabbing his head, "She can't see! Leo can hardly walk! What are they thinking?!"

"Calm down, Don, they are the only chance we have at getting out of this hole right now," Raph rolls his eyes.

"But what about the chimera?!" Donnie exclaims.

"That's why we need to get out. They need our help," Raph takes out his grappling hook, steals Mikey's weapon so that he can connect his rope to the chain, making it longer. He throws a look at Casey who nods in understanding and pulls out his hockey stick, waiting for his turn. Raph tosses the rope into the air, Casey hits it and sends it flying high up the hole and over the edge where it clangs to a stop.

They all hold their breath as Raph gives it a few tugs. The line holds snug.

"Alright, let's go. Go!"

Mikey jumps up onto the line at Raph's command, followed by Donnie and then Casey. Meanwhile, Raph grabs Ryu's hand and pulls her up off the floor where she's found a seat against the rock wall. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he helps hold her up so that she can grab onto the line and start climbing up after the others.

A second later, however, there's a loud screech and the line is whipped violently back a forth. The chimera grips the line in its beak and shakes them all loose from the rope and toppling back down the hole towards the boiling waters below.

Donnie and Casey grab hold of the edge of the ledge they had all been on previously while Raph grabs hold of Mikey as he flies past him and he stops in mid-air so that he doesn't dive into the rumbling waters. Mikey, though, ends up having his butt still hit the hot waters and it sends him jumping up onto the ledge above Donnie and Casey with a squeak.

Raph glances up and searches for Ryu. She's nowhere to be found. His eyes widen in horror, "Where's Ryu?!"

They all start looking around as everyone climbs back onto the ledge.

"There!"

Raph turns at Donnie's scream and finds Ryu scrambling to hold onto the opposite side of the hole, her fingers digging into a small hold on the jagged rocks. The toes of her boots scrape against the wall desperately, but they catch hold of nothing. The rock she holds crumbles between her fingers.

"Ryu!"

"Hang on!"

The rocks give way. Ryu's body falls. She screams, the sound shaking the cave awake. The water breaks under her weight.

"NO!" Raph moves to dive after her, but his brothers hold him back.

"Raph, stop! That water is too hot!" Donnie yells at him.

"Let go!"

"Stop it, Raph! Don't be insane!" Casey grabs the turtle's other arm to hold him in place as well.

A loud, shrill, animalistic scream tears through the cave and the boiling waters flash to life and glow a bright pink-purple that lights up their faces so bright that they're forced to cover their eyes against it. The surface of the water explodes and the light leaves it as it rockets up the hole to the sky high above.

The light explodes and there's a loud cry from the chimera. A few brief moments later, the chimera's long neck comes spilling into the hole, knocked unconscious, and the guys have to dodge the head as it slams into the side of the wall. A few rocks come loose from above and tumble down over their heads.

"Guys, move!"

They all look up as Leo calls down to them, pushing the mutant out of the way of the top of the geyser hole.

"We've got to get out of here!" Mikey exclaims.

"Up! Climb up now!" Donnie points up the mutant's neck and everyone goes to follow his order. They reach the top of the hole just as the beast begins to stir awake again.

Leo helps his brothers out of the hole as they reach the top and Donnie and Casey immediately run to April's side. Donnie gets to her first, pushing Casey out of the way, and gasps, "April, your eyes…"

"Yeah, I can't see anything right now. The creature must be in total darkness," April nods.

"Uh, guys, exploding mountain. Remember?" Raph cuts in. "And we've got to find Ryu."

"Ryu?" April turns in his direction, "What do you mean? Was she with you?"

"She was until she fell into the hot tub water," Mikey points towards the hole, "But then she started her glowy-glowy and shot out of the hole towards the sky before exploding."

"She what?!" Leo looks towards the skies in alarm, "Did you see what happened next?"

"No, a mutant monster was stuffed down the hole, blocking our line of sight!" Raph growls. The beast starts to kick and thrash from its cage in the hole and the mountain begins to rumble, tossing rocks and boulders down from higher up the mountain.

"Avalanche!" Leo pushes April towards Donnie and they all race at top speed down the mountain as fast as they can. They drop from a wide, flat boulder into a short ravine and April suddenly stops.

"Wait. I can see…I can see again!"

"This way!" Leo orders and they all duck down under an overhang as the main wave of rocks come barreling down over them, encasing them in darkness.

* * *

Raph pushes the last rock out of his way and finds daylight, followed closely by his brothers and April and Casey. Knowing that his family is okay, Raph starts looking for any signs of Ryu. The last thing he saw was the explosion in the sky…could she still be in the geyser?

"Ryu?! Ryu!" Raph screams at the top of his lungs as he jumps from rock to rock, sliding down in some areas until he finally makes it into the tree line. "Ryu?!"

There's still no answer, none except his own voice echoing right back to him as it bounces off the trees. He stops running and leans over breathing heavily as he plants his palms on his knees.

 _There's no way she can hear me when she's deaf_ , he mentally thinks. _It doesn't matter, I've got to find her._

"Ryu!" Raph stands straight up and screams even louder. "Ryu!"

His knees finally give out and he leans back against a tree to stop himself from falling over. He squeezes his eyes shut against the onslaught of his thoughts; his memories fly around in a blur too fast for him to pen down. They spin faster and faster until he can't seem to find where one begins and the next begins.

Her heterochromia eyes glaring at him stubbornly. Those soft lips set in a defiant pout. Training together in the dojo until late hours. Challenging each other on the pinball machine until their fingers were sore. Those early morning hours when he sat with her on the couch when she couldn't sleep. Watching her try to hold the weight of all her secrets on her own shoulders as he stood by going crazy. Seeing the pain she went through whenever she lost control of her powers and changed into that other form deep inside herself. Having to suffer through all three times she was hurt and not being able to help…

 _Just like now…_ , he thinks. His knees finally give out and he sinks to the ground, sitting with his back against the trunk of the tree and his arms folded over his knees so that he can hide away his face in defeat. _I have no place as a ninja if I can't even protect her…my family…_ , he curses himself.

 _Cough! Cough! Cough!_

Raph jerks his head up…

"R-Raph!"

His eyes widen…

"Ra- _cough_ -ph! Raphael!"

He jumps to his feet and rushes around the tree…and there she is. White hair messed up as if she's been tumbling down a hill, slipping out of the tie she uses to keep it bound on her right shoulder. Dirt patches blot here and there on her jeans and pale green shirt, along her arms and across her cheeks. Something has torn her shirt, leaving it hanging loose off one shoulder, tearing a hole into her jeans along one knee, and her shoes are covered in mud.

"Raphael!"

Her eyes are shut against the wind that whips her hair into her eyes. It's not until she comes further out of the darker shadows of the trees that he can see that there's mud across her face…and it feels like his heart is going to burst.

"Ryu…"

"R-raph…?"

He starts, "You can hear again!" He grabs her by the elbows as she stumbles forward, rubbing the heels of her palms into her eyes to try and get the dirt out of her face.

"Yeah," she grumbles, "It's coming back little by little…my ears are still ringing like crazy…it's kind of annoying."

His hands are reaching up and cupping the sides of her head gently, his thumbs rubbing the mud off her eyelids softly until she can delicately blink open her eyes. It's in that second that their eyes connect that he realizes his face has come nose to nose with hers, his fingers in her hair, her hands hovering in the small space between them. They've both become frozen in time, only the wind moving in song around them. Even Ryu's expression is becoming more shocked by the second; her cheeks are starting to tinge a soft pink under her eyes.

"Uh…" Ryu pulls away quickly and rubs the rest of the mud off her face with a shaky laugh, "S-so…how are…uh…t-the others? Everyone okay?"

"Y-yeah…" Raph watches her, staring at her hands working through her hair to return it to some sort of order, observing the pink slowly leave her face, studying how the wind tosses her shirt around her exposed shoulder. He grasps what he's doing a second later—he's committing her to memory. Every move, every sound, every smell…

Raph reaches forward and pulls her into a tight hug, his stress almost evaporating the second he feels her small form safely in his arms.

Ryu's eyes widen in alarm, her hands hanging in the air confused on what to do. Her who body is breaking out into goosebumps, skin ablaze with warmth; it's almost like being engulfed by embers. She finally lets her hands wrap under his arms and over his shoulders slowly and he tightens his hold around her. He breathes in deeply, smelling the deep scent of the earth on her skin. He always imagined she'd smell like flowers, something a bit more feminine…but this is even better somehow. It matches how strong she is and yet at the same time how fragile she is underneath that rough exterior.

His hand rubs up her back towards her neck and hesitates at her exposed shoulder, the ripped fabric hanging down the back of her shoulder where his fingers stop. He goes farther and brushes his fingers over her skin—that smooth skin tinted just faintly with a soft tan like the sands on the beaches he's seen in pictures. Raph can feel Ryu move closer, snuggling deeper into his chest and burying her face into his shoulder.

He tightens his embrace even more but not enough to hurt her, he knows his strength is a bit past the normal mark, and takes another deep breath. He can feel words building up in the back of his throat, but before he can let them out…

"Raph!"

"Ryu!"

"Where are you guys?!"

"Did you go to get pizza?"

…

"Mikey…really?"

"What? Never hurts to ask. The squirrels can do anything," Mikey shoots back.

"Shut up, Mikey!"

Ryu starts to pull away and Raph releases her just as the rest of their comrades come through the trees. Mikey spots her first.

"RYU!" he wraps his arms around her waist and drops to his knees dramatically, "Why'd you leave us? We were sooo worried!"

Everyone laughs at the younger turtle as Ryu hugs him back, "Aw, I missed you too, little brother."

Leo and Donnie take their turns getting their hugs in before they all make their way back to the farmhouse. Leo lets a laugh go and Raph can hear some of the stress leave his brother's voice, "Bet Venus and Venn are freaking out by now."

"Knowing Venn…yeah, definitely," Ryu chuckles from the back of the group. They all laugh, giving Ryu the perfect cover to disguise the _pop_ of the cork she flips off a small test tube. She makes sure that Raph, the closest to her, has his eyes forward before she tilts her head back and takes a swig of the dark purple liquid inside the bottle.

 _Eight to go_ , she thinks, feeling her body instantly react and all the soreness and beatings she's received today suddenly begin to heal themselves.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all reviews, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	16. Chapter 15: 3-8 Vision Quest

**The end is almost here! Time to build up to yet another emotional ending...though I can't decide whether I want to kill them off or give this a happy ending...**

 **Well, at least after this I can get started on part 3. Love y'all.**

 **Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome!**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **15**

 **3-8: "Vision Quest"**

Ryu watches from the swing, head perches on her hand, in boredom. It's been too hot to do anything all day and yet these people have found some form of energy to train. Growing up in the mountains, she's gotten more accustomed to cold weather versus the heat. A heavy sigh from behind her makes her turn to look back over her shoulder at Venus who leans her head back in the swing with her eyes closed. A thin gleam of sweat is on her forehead and her eyebrows are furrowed in frustration; obviously she's not enjoying the heat either.

Venn had decided to go to the store for everybody so that they could all get in some training, but who could get anything done in this roasting weather?

Raph punches forward and snaps the chunk of firewood into splinters, grinning smugly, "You like that?"

April and Casey roll their eyes from their place by the swing as the red turtle shows off arrogantly. Ryu lets the corner of her mouth lift up into a smirk as she watches Raph. Sometimes his childish egotism could be quite cute.

Sometimes.

"Ugh, why did I leave home. I'm 'bout to die," Venus grumbles from her place sprawled out in the swing.

"Go inside then," Ryu tells her as she observes Casey sets up a short log for April to take a swing at while the other turtles advise her from the sidelines. "Clean, organize, wash the dishes, check on that scan I have Metalhead doing in the barn."

Venus groans louder, "It's too hot to move!"

Ryu rolls her eyes, dropping her chin back onto her hand. As she turns back to the group, April kicks the block of wood and Casey is thrown back onto the ground. A movement along the tree line catches her eye; Ryu sits up a bit straighter.

"Leo?" she climbs to her feet quickly when the blue turtle suddenly falls to his knees. Her outburst makes everyone stop and follow after her to Leo's side. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"I just had a realization in the woods," he answers, out of breath.

"Going off alone with a bum leg was a bad idea?" Raph scoffs.

"No, it's just what we need. What we all need," Leo growls. He tells everyone what happened. He had been hunting and then how he had come across a deer.

Ryu raises an eyebrow when he mentions the deer attacking him, but Mikey starts laughing loudly, "Ha! You got beaten up by a deer."

"It's a sign, Mikey. We're so caught up in T-phones and junk food and TV that we've become at odds with nature. A true ninja must become one with it to master himself," Leo tells them.

"Hey, man, you leave TV out of this!" Mikey warns his older brother.

"We'll do three days of meditation and awareness in the woods-."

"Three days! We're gonna live like animals!" Mikey exclaims in a panic.

"I think Leo's right. Camping's a great idea! I'm tired of being stuck at the farm house," April smiles excitedly.

"Sorry, April, this trip is ninja's only," Leo tells her as Raph helps his brother back towards the house.

"B-but…I'm almost a Kunoichi!" the red-head argues.

"Yeah, **almost** ," Raph chuckles.

"Ryu," Leo calls, "I think you need to come as well."

"What?" April gasps.

Ryu jerks back in surprise at Leo's words, "I second that: why?"

Raph and Leo stop so that the blue turtle can turn to look at her, "I'm not sure…just a feeling I got out in the woods."

Venus has stopped by Ryu's side and they share a confused look, "Guess I'm stuck at the farmhouse."

"Guess you'll be catching up on some chores."

Venus growls, narrowing her eyes.

* * *

Ryu shifts her small backpack on her shoulders, comparing the size of her load to the turtles who march ahead of her. Leo is discussing what all they need to work on while they're out here in the woods, something about the first eighteen ninjitsu disciplines. She's never studied the actual art of ninjitsu, except for a few of the lessons she picked up from Splinter, so she's kind of zoning them out while they're walking. Her mind drifts off into random thoughts as they hike. It's not ten minutes later that they stop in a small clearing and Leo tells them that they'll first work on their meditation, Ryu keeping her complaints about already knowing how to meditate to herself, and they all drop their bags in the clearing at the foot of the large oaks.

It's when Leo tells them that they'll be doing their meditation among the tops of those oaks that Ryu lets her complaints known, "Yeah and that's where I draw the line. I don't do heights."

"Ryu, a ninja must face their fears and-."

"Leo, I love ya lots, but one, I'm not a ninja like you guys, and two, I'm not afraid of heights…I just don't do them," she spins on her heel and goes to sit down on the ground at the base of the tree. Folding up her legs India-style, Ryu closes her eyes and begins to calm her breathing as the boys take off climbing up the oaks around her.

And that's what their first day consists of: meditating, hiking, stretching, saving Mikey from some squirrels he peeves off…by the end of it all, Ryu has slumped to a bad mood because of the heat. The second day, rains came, forcing them to take shelter in a small cave and watching Raph build a fire to keep a light going for the night. The third day is more stretching, more meditating, more hiking…

She finally stops and lets them wander off while she sets up their campfire for the night before the sun can set. A scream from Mikey has her rushing off into the trees towards it, finding him falling to the ground from above and landing face first into the dirt. She goes to his side as his brother's leap to the ground around them a few seconds later.

"Whoa…"

Ryu's eyes look up at Leo's soft gasp and she follows his gaze. A huge buck stands a little ways off, staring back at Leo with a stern expression; weird considering deer are more well-known to run off at the first sign of movement.

"Guys, look!" Leo points off and looks back, Ryu blinks, and the deer has vanished from view. Something moves out of the corner of her eyes and she jerks her gaze towards it. Whatever it is, it's moving like a shadow. It's not normal. "It was the same deer. I think it's been following us."

"Yeah, it's probably laughing at the four dumb turtles lost in the woods," Raph laughs.

"Actually, in the Shinto religion, deer are considered messengers of the divine," Donnie adds a fact to the conversation. "Maybe it means we're on the right path."

Leo gazes off behind his brothers and spots the deer as it reappears long enough to stride gracefully behind a wide tree, only to reappear a moment later…

Ryu's eyes widen in astonishment, spotting it the same time Leo does and recognizing everything in a split second. The deer now stands on two legs, its dark brown fur spiraled in ancient swirls of lighter tans while white tuffs twist from its elbows and around its neck. Its antlers have become impossibly larger, looking more now like wood than bone.

 _Oh my giddy aunt…!_

Raph, Mikey, and Donnie all burst to life at the sight of it, "MUTANT!"

"NO!" Leo and Ryu both yell at the same time, only Ryu moves forward.

She rushes forward, skidding to a stop between her friends and the deer before digging her fingers into the dirt and solidifying it with her power. The soil shifts to solid rock and spreads up her forearms to form glove-like weapons which she raises up and turns towards the approaching turtles. The rocks shoot out spikes from the tops of her fists, threateningly, and they all stop in alarm.

"R-Ryu?" Raph says, confused.

Ryu doesn't move. She remains rooted, eyes glaring at all of them, daring any of them to make a move.

"Guys, stand down!" Leo orders, taking a step further forward to calm his brothers.

"Turn your eyes down!" Ryu growls.

"What?!" Raph gawks.

"Guys, look!" Mikey points behind Ryu, "It's gone!"

Ryu spins around and sure enough the deer has gone from their presence. She balls her hands into fists, the rocks falling away to the ground back into dust, and squeezes her eyes shut.

"Hey, Ryu."

The voice raises her eyes from the ground, finding Leo standing beside her.

"You seem to know something about all-."

"You don't?" she cuts him off, growling through her teeth. When his only answer is a puzzled look, she sighs heavily to face them all, "That deer was no ordinary deer. That was a Spirit Guide."

"Huh?!"

* * *

Ryu doesn't move to stop him when Raph takes a seat beside her, the warm glow of the fire highlights his green eyes like blazing emeralds. She sighs heavily, "Guys, I'm sorry."

"It's fine, but…" Donnie trails off.

"No, it's not. I should've explained my actions, not threatening you. It's just…" she pauses, breathes, and gathers her thoughts, "That deer you saw, the Spirit Guide, they are special, very powerful creatures."

"Spirit…Guides?" Donnie raises an eyebrow, throwing a look at Leo.

The blue turtle does the same, "What's a Spirit Guide?"

Ryu eyes him carefully, "You don't know? He was yours."

Leo starts.

"Spirit Guides are sort of like familiars in the sense that they only have one ward, but they're so much more. They only appear before their wards, which was why I was so surprised since you all saw him," Ryu explains.

"Does that mean that deer was…all of our Spirit Guide?" Mikey scratches his head.

"Is that possible?" Donnie adds.

"No," Ryu shakes her head quickly, "But I have seen that happen for twins once a long time ago. They both shared an otter as a Guide, but it didn't…it didn't end good."

"What happened?" Leo leans forward to wrap his arms around his knees, the fire popping noisily as he does.

"One of the twins…had a child but it died at birth. The twin was pretty shaken up. She stopped listening, stopped believing, so the Guide left her. It even stopped appearing as much to the remaining twin. That kind of existence can be lonely for people like us in the Dragon League who rely on that type of guidance. Most people never see their Spirit Guides unless-."

"They've had the spiritual training."

Ryu looks over at Raph who finally speaks, staring thoughtfully into the blaze.

"Like you and Venus and Venn," he adds. Ryu nods.

"So…a deer?" Leo mumbles mostly to himself. "How can you be sure he was my Guide?"

"He found you in the woods, didn't he? So he technically did appear to only you first, but it's still odd that all of you saw him. Guides tend to make their guidance with their wards a…personal thing, so others never see them."

"So then…what was so wrong with us looking at him if he's the one who showed up in front of us all in the first place?"

Ryu nods at Raph with a smirk, "Well, first off, it's disrespectful. And also because of the connection between Guide and ward; like I said it's a personal connection that will remain strong as long as the ward needs guidance. You won't keep your Guide forever, just until they're needed, then they move on to their next ward and…" she shrugs.

"You never see them again," Leo finishes. The group goes silent, listening to the crickets and wind sing through the grass. "So…what's your Guide?"

Ryu smiles at the fire, "A fox."

"Ha!" Mikey points mockingly at his eldest brother, "Leo's got stuck with a deer!"

Ryu kicks his leg lovingly, "Stop that. It doesn't matter the size or shape of Guide. They all hold the same amount of power and divinity. Venus's Spirit Guide is a moth."

They all open their mouths to spit out their comments but Ryu stops them quickly.

"Don't say anything to her! If she finds out that I told you, she'll never let me hear the end of it!"

Laughing, they all settle in for the night and prepare to sleep. As the fire flares up when Mikey tosses in another log, they lie down and gaze up at the dark sky just peeking through the tree tops.

"Hey, Ryu," Leo calls, "How can I…how do Guides communicate?"

"It's not in a verbal way, if that's what you're asking," she replies, "It's more of an…inner feeling. Just focus inward next time he comes to you. He'll communicate if it's your time. You'll know."

They all go silent again…the sounds of the night singing them to sleep slowly…the fire dies down after an hour or two. The embers are just about to die out, the last flame shrinking away under the coals, when the wind stops.

The fire explodes back to life, turning into a brilliant blue as the flames reach towards the sky above them in a cyclone of heat and light. They all jump and move away from the fire in alarm as it gets higher and higher above them. A form appears in the fire, blue as the flames, but much more alive.

"MASTER SPLINTER!"

The image of their sensei greets them all in Japanese before they all start to pound him with questions. Ryu opens her mouth to speak, so many things spilling onto her tongue that she's not sure she can hold them in, but then her memories come back of the night that she left and of what she said to him. She drops her eyes to the ground in shame, refusing to allow herself to see him.

"Are you, like, a ghost?" Mikey whimpers.

"My spirit has become detached from my body, but that body still lives," the image responds in Splinter's wise tone.

"You're…alive?!" Leo climbs to his feet and the image turns toward him with a nod. "Where are you, sensei, let us help you!"

"You cannot…yet. There is much you must overcome. If you cannot find your inner spiritual strength, you will not stand a chance against the Shreddar."

Ryu flinches at the image's words.

"But, master Splinter," Leo starts again, "My leg injury…i-it's physical…until I heal…"

The image places a transparent hand on the eldest turtle's shoulder, "We chose what holds us back and what moves us forward." Leo nods as the image turns to look over all of the pupils sitting around the glowing blue fire, "You will all learn this. Each of you must journey out alone to face your spiritual adversary."

Ryu raises her eyes, blinking hurriedly in confusion into the bright blue flames, _Even me…? But wait…_

"Raphael," the image turns to him and they all glance over, "Your temper is like a fire that you must learn to focus for power."

The image then turns to Mikey, "Michelangelo, your mind is overrun with distractions. Learn to be strong and calm like the forest."

Then is Donnie's turn, "Donatello, you rely too much on your mind and not on your body. Be strong like the mountain."

And lastly comes Leo, "Leonardo, you must be the leader in body and spirit. Be like the wind, let nothing weigh you down."

Ryu listens to the image give each of the turtles their tasks in deep thought as she fiddles with a small twig on her lap, _Fire, Wood, Earth, Wind…those are four of the five elements that the Dragons taught us that make up the world…but that still leaves-._

"Ryu…"

She flinches, feeling the image's eyes physically lands on her. Her shoulders tense, waiting for his retribution. Her heart hammers in her chest, she squeezes her eyes shut tightly against his oncoming anger.

"You are strong willed and loyal…but the fear you hold on to of your past…and your future…are weighing you down," the image tells her. "You must learn to let go. You must learn to flow, to adapt, to be resilient, like the water."

 _And there it is…_ , she thinks.

"Master this, and you will master yourself."

She's not sure if the last statement was meant for all of them or just her, but it felt as if it was focused on herself. Ryu, keeping her eyes at the base of the fire, nods unsure.

"Sleep now," the image tells them all, "For your greatest challenge awaits you on the spiritual plane. For the challenges you face there will be just as deadly as those you face in the real world. Be warned."

His last words echo into the forest around them, leaving them all in a silence so thick it's almost tangible. Unsure of what to say or afraid to break the feeling with the wrong words, none of them are sure, so instead they all glance at each other before lying down to sleep.

Ryu lies on her side away from the rest of them, suddenly feeling alone. She thinks over Splinter's words. They sit like heavy stones in her heart. She knows the 'past' that he had been referring to, but how can she face it now? It's over and done with. It's not like she can go back in time and…

 _Sleep now, Ryu…things will unfold soon…_

Ryu closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep as the voice in the back of her mind whispers to her softly. The voice of her Spirit Guide has always been a welcoming song to her all her life.

* * *

The turtles sit up and stretch from sleep, restless after last night's message, and find one Ryu missing. Raph glances off in all directions only to be met with trees.

"Where'd she go?"

His brothers shrug, not knowing how to answer.

"I'm here."

When they turn, they find someone unlike any they have ever seen. Ryu has white cloth wound around her bust, leaving her stomach bare, and two thin strips crossing over her shoulders. Her pants are soft gray pants that look like sweat pants if not for the thin material they were made of. More white bindings cover her bare feet, forearms, and hands in anticipation of a fight. This is the first time Raph has gotten a _really_ clear look at the Marks she received after going through the Trial; the bends and spirals of the Marks look like an ancient language inscribing secrets unknown across her flesh. He turns his eyes away when his gaze starts to drift too far down her stomach to follow them, feeling his cheeks burn a little.

"Sorry, but I couldn't sleep," she says, finally lifting her eyes from the ground to glance at Leo.

"It's okay," he nods, "We all know what we have to do. Master Splinter made our tasks clear. It's time we begin."

Everyone nods in response.

"Each of us will forge new armor and weapons then journey on alone where we will be challenged in the spirit realm, a place where the unreal becomes real. We'll meet our ultimate fate."

"Wood, Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind…"

They all glance at Ryu, question marks on their face.

"It's what we learned in one of our lessons back home. Those are the five elements that make up the world. Everyone falls under one of those elements; that's called your Ruling Element. It changes constantly depending on how you grow inside yourself," she explains.

She looks to Mikey first, "Wood, or the forest, stands for a friendly, calm, generous, and caring nature, but its weakness is worry and overprotectiveness. It shows in your love for your brothers sometimes when they're hurt or threatened."

Next she turns to Donnie, "Earth, or metal, stands for a strong-willed, focused, independent nature, but its weakness is anxiety. It shows in your emotions towards April or when too much stress is put on you to be the brains of the group."

Leo is next, "Wind, or air, stands for a leading, hard-working nature, but its weakness is paranoia. It shows when you overthink your plans or worry too much about being the best leader you can be."

Lastly, she turns to Raph, "Fire stands for a talkative, attention seeking, sensitive nature, but its weakness is anger. It shows when you let your temper get the better of you."

The turtles lower their gaze, thinking over what she tells them, but Raph looks back a second later, "What about water?"

Ryu's gaze drops in shame again but she admits, "Water…stands for a loyal, smart, family-centered nature…but its weakness is…fear."

No one asks, they don't need to; somewhere deep inside…they all know.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all reviews, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	17. Chapter 16:3-8(Part 2) Ryu

**Two more chapters left. Any suggestions for part 3 are now being taken. I'd love to hear about what you would like to see in the next segment. Enjoy.**

 **Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **16**

 **3-8.2: "Ryu"**

Venus drops the basket on the floor in front of the washing machine, standing back up to pinch her nose in disgust, "Why are men so filthy?"

"That's not filth, that's our own manly musk," Casey grins smugly.

"Walk away. Now."

He picks up on the 'get lost or you're dead' tone in the older girl's voice and he ducks away quickly. Venn watches him go, leaning against the doorframe to chuckle, "You know, that's probably why you don't have any friends."

"I have plenty of friends, thank you…wait. Excuse me?"

He grins at her, "Chill, kid, I'm just trying to give you some advice."

"It's not needed."

Venn rolls his eyes at her childish snap of defiance.

"Are they back yet?"

"No, they're not," Venn throws her a look as she stalks out of the wash room.

"Ugh, I hate picking up all this slack!"

"Don't you mean…'actually doing chores'?"

"I will kick your skinny-!"

He slaps a hand over her mouth in a flash, "Kid's story! How many times do I have to tell you this?!"

Venus opens her mouth wide and bites down, effectively getting him to let go and move out of her way so that she can move back to the kitchen. April is busy washing the dishes from lunch, clearing the table so that she can wipe off any remainder crumbs. Venus takes out the broom and starts sweeping up the floor as the red head wipes down the kitchen counter.

Venus glances out of the corner of her eye at the younger girl running around the room, "Can I…ask you a question…?"

April jerks to a stop, caught off guard by the fact that Venus willingly wants to talk to her directly; considering the fact that Venus never showed a desire to talk to her. "Um," she trails off, "Sure?"

"How do you feel about Ryu?"

Again, she's caught off guard by the question, but April thinks it over, wondering if this is a trick, "Well…I feel like…she's been a bit…distant lately, maybe a little short tempered with Casey and I, but nothing more than that. Why?"

Venus stares off out of the window at a bird bouncing across the grass after a worm or bug. She lets out a sigh, "No reason, just curious. Why do you think she's been like that?"

"Hmm…I don't know. Stress?"

Venus fights back the urge to slap the red head, hands quickly busying themselves with dusting the windows. As the silence stretches on April drops her rag and turns to her, "What's the deal?"

"What deal?"

"No one asks something like that without an ulterior motive," the red head lowers her tone.

"True, but I'm not 'no one'. I may have an ulterior motive, but I'm not going to just go around blurting it out, now am I? Wouldn't be much of a spy if I did that all the time."

April narrows her gaze, "Spy…? For who?"

Venus drops her rag and turns to meet her eyes easily, trying not to smirk at the kid's juvenile try at a threatening glare. _She'll need a lot of years of hard core practice to get where I am_ , she thinks.

Letting a smooth smile pull up one corner of her mouth, she crosses her arms and leans back against the window frame, "That's not part of the game…now is it?"

Venn walks in right then and nearly chokes on the tension, " _Cough_ -W-what the heck is… _Cough!_ How are you two doing today?" He glances between both girls warily, feeling the cat-fight ready to break out in front of him.

Venus finally moves after a long moment, keeping her grin in place as she walks past him, "I'm fine…for now. I'll be outside surveying if you need me."

Venn swallows as she passes him and closes the front door behind her. The wind welcomes her, bringing smells of flowers and fresh cut grass to her senses, and she tucks her hair behind her ear. The golden bar in her ear gleams in the sunlight along with the three other studs in her lobe. She finds a nice place in the yard among the soft grass and sits down cross-legged, placing her hands on her knees with her palms facing up and open towards the sky. Closing her eyes, Venus focuses her breathing…. _in and out, in and out_ ….

The wind stops as she drifts off into her connection to the spirit, a living connection that floats through all things that possess a living being: plants, animals, people. It's all connected in a much deeper way than people realize. Venus has been trained to locate and see these connections and even travel them sometimes if she needs too.

 _Be ready…_

Venus tears her eyes open and blinks repeatedly at the voice brushing against the back of her mind. She nods to the unseen voice and stands to her feet just as April, Casey, and Venn walk out the front door into the yard.

"So what are we practicing today?" April asks.

"Let's strengthen that leg of yours and get you breaking wood before the others come home," Venn answers as he leads them over to the stack of firewood near the outdoor swing.

"Too late," Venus calls as they pass her.

They all stop and follow her gaze towards the tree line as figures begin to move out of the shadows. Leo, Raph, Donnie, Mikey, they all step out dressed in new armor of white; completely opposite of the ninja's traditional black. They carry flags, each with a symbol in black painted on the white fabric. As they approach, April takes a step towards them.

"W-what…happened out there?"

Leo lifts his head so that his eyes are revealed from under the hood, "It's time for us to go back. Back to New York."

Venus and Venn share a look and she can't help but think, _Finally going to get out of this dump and do some real work._ That's when she realizes that Ryu is nowhere around them.

Venn must've caught on to the same thing, "Where's Ryu?"

The turtle's expression turns to bewilderment. "She's not here?" Raph asks.

They all shake their heads 'no'.

"Venus, can you find her?"

She rolls her eyes at Venn's request, kneels down to place her open palm against the ground and shuts her eyes. Her breathing instantly begins to slow, pacing itself as she concentrates on slipping into her focus almost lifting out of her body. Her spirit reaches out for the connection between her own living soul and that of the grass.

The spark is almost instant, tugging on her as she feels a piece of herself become a part of the network of live wires all around her, pulling her consciousness forward. She's suddenly flying through the ground, across the grass, through the trees, and with the wind. The connections carry her consciousness a deeper into the woods until she approaches a clear, flowing stream and a short waterfall, slowing down as she reaches the edge of the shore.

Standing in the water with her back to Venus is Ryu, and further away is a form she's never seen before. The being is a fox with startling cool, blue eyes; those eyes turn to look directly at Venus as if it can sense her. She gasps, the connection sparking around her and breaking her concentration, throwing her back into herself and out of her focus.

Venn grabs her shoulder when she starts to fall back from the hit; she stands up a moment later to face him, "She's not too far. I can find her."

"Then let's go," he nods.

* * *

"There she is," Venus points out from their hiding space behind the bushes. All of them poke their heads out over the top of the thorny branches poking into them.

"Couldn't pick a better hiding spot?" Venn growls under his breath.

"Well, excuse me for not wanting to be under… _that_ stare."

Venn follows her gaze and searches out across the river to the opposite shore, spotting the small form of an animal sitting calmly by the shore under the shade of a fallen tree further up the bank. The animal slowly moves, its cool, blue eyes turning smoothly towards him until they meet Venn's gaze. The connection sends a jolt through him and he instantly drops his eyes to the ground, noticing that all the others on the opposite side of him all staring off at the scene.

"Lower your eyes!" Venus hisses. They all drop their eyes sharply at the order.

Across the river, the animal turns to look back at Ryu, the fox shifting its tail to wrap it around its feet as it watches her. The white-haired girl is balancing on her right foot, her left placed against her right knee and her hands lifted high above her head where they're clasped together. The leaves tumble through the wind and onto the rivers surface around her and flow away with the currant as the water tumbles and twists around the rocks.

The water breaks, rearing back like a snake and striking at her. Ryu moves, spinning fluidly to side step the attack. Raph follows her movements, noticing then the white bandana round her eyes to blind her. He furrows his brow in bewilderment; what could the lesson be in that? She's already half blind.

Ryu continues her dance across the surface of the stones peeking out over the water's surface; spiraling with a grace that even rivaled that over the rivers. Even though her eyes are blinded by the fabric, Ryu seems to know when and where the water is going to strike and counters.

Raph understands; it's faith. The perfect counter for fear. By placing faith in your senses, trusting your body to know what to do, the fear of what will come and how you will face it all but vanishes. Like water, one has to keep flowing, drift, and adapt to the changing landscape before it.

Raph releases the breath he had been holding as he observes her changing right before his eyes. He hadn't noticed it until now, but something about her is different. Just as Venus had said once before:

" _Something dark was there, attached to her almost…I mean attached like a parasite._ "

His chest tightens at the thought that swirl crazily in his head. Just what is 'attached' to her that they can't see?

* * *

Ryu hears the almost inaudible _swish_ of the attack and flips back to avoid it, landing on her right palm for a pause before flipping again onto the shoreline on the wet soil. Her toes dig into the soft dirt with a deep sigh of relief.

 _You have done well…_

Ryu nods and turns towards the voice, bowing deeply. She can feel the pride flowing off her Spirit Guide, making her smile warmly before she catches on to the approaching sound of footsteps. Lots of them.

"Ryu! That was awesome!" Mikey exclaims.

She nearly falls over when a pair of arms circles her torso abruptly and lifts her into the air. Ryu laughs and pats him on the head, "Thanks, Mikey, but can you put me down please? I've been beat up really bad today."

He sets her down carefully and they all bombard her with questions about the fox, about her spirit plane quest, about what she learned.

"Guys, guys, hold on! One at a time," Ryu chuckles.

"Okay, I got one."

Everyone turns at Venus's voice, finding the girl standing by the water with her arms crossed. There's a puzzled look on her face, her eyebrows are furrowed.

"Why are you still wearing the blindfold?"

She starts, reaching up to finger the cloth over her face, "Wow, I totally forgot about it. It was part of the lesson, to learn how to trust me and not my eyes, and how to adapt and evade like the water does."

Raph watches Ryu's hands move to untie the blindfold only to struggle with the knot, so he turns her around with a gently pull of her shoulder and begins to tug at the knot, "Can't even tie a knot right."

"Shut up," Ryu snickers, secretly enjoying the feeling of his hands working through the knot and dropping the cloth away from her face.

At first her sight doesn't adjust to the light, but she blinks through it until she can see the faces of her friends clearly…and it's like seeing them for the first time. She almost forgot that she's half blind, or maybe it's the light, or maybe it's just her. Standing here with the sunlight streaming down through the trees, Ryu has never seen things more clearly.

Her eyes shift over all of them, ending on the turtles: Leo, Donnie, Mikey, and then finally Raph. She stops there and stares him straight in the eyes, ignoring the internal urge to look away. Ryu swallows hard and faces him fully, "Let's go home."

Raph nods with a small smile pulling one corner of his mouth. His brothers follow suit.

She smiles, "We have a city to save."

* * *

Ryu finishes up packing her things and zips her bag closed before standing up and looking around the kitchen. She's come to kind of like this kitchen; it reminds her of the one she used to have when she was a child. Taking a deep breath, filling her nose with the smells of wood and waffles and fresh apples, Ryu sits down at the table with a sigh. A familiar heavy pounding comes in a second later and she smiles.

"Hey, Metalhead, haven't seen you in a hot minute," she pats the robot on the head.

Metalhead's head lifts to stare her in the face before its jaw opens and a voice exits, " **Well, I've been uploading some old programs I used to have on him. By the way, thanks for letting me have that scanner.** "

"No prob, Donnie, it's the least I can do after all you've done for me. Wait, where are you at?"

" **I'm out at the barn, Leo and Raph are packing up the car, and Mikey is…well…** "

"Yeah…" Ryu trails off with him. "So once everything is packed, we're heading home."

" **Yep.** "

"Have y'all come up with a plan yet?"

" **No, Leo's been sorta quite about the whole situation.** "

Ryu nods into the empty room, "Gotcha."

" **What about you three?** "

Her eyes pop open wide. Three? He said that as if they weren't all on the same team. How could they all not be on the same team now? "Um-."

"We'll be heading to the city with you."

Venus takes the seat at the table by the window and grabs an apple from the bowl without a second thought.

Ryu glares at the girl's rude outburst, "Those are wax."

Venus coughs up the apple violently. Venn storms into the room and pats her on the back to clear her choking, "I really wish you two would stop being so…"

"Us?" both girls finish together.

He rolls his eyes, "Just get into the living room."

"Why?" Venus coughs around the remaining apple pieces, wiping her mouth.

Venn stops at the door frame and motions with his head for them to follow, "There's something you might want to see."

Both of them leave the room, Metalhead stomping behind them, and head into the living room. Venn has the TV on, the news lady giving her report loudly as she stands in front of a small building that could pass as a house if not for the business signs. Ryu's eyes widen in alarm.

 _That's Roy's shop…_ , she thinks.

" **Just this morning, this innocent shop was attacked by an unknown assailant who has yet to be found. The owner, Roy Cooper, was not found at the scene, leaving police wondering if this brutal scene was the result of a kidnapping or something much worse.** "

"Geez, can they make it anymore dreary?" Venn shakes his head.

"It's the news. Of course they can," Venus answers around her apple, a bored expression on her face as she listens in on the report.

"Can _you_ be anymore dreary?"

"It's me. Of course I can," she grins.

Venn turns to throw her a look but stops, smile dropping off his face, "Where's Ryu?"

"Slow much. She left a while ago."

"What?!"

The sound of squealing tires and gravel flying against the house makes them both jump in surprise.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all reviews, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	18. Chapter 17: 3-9 Return to New York

**One more chapter left. Any suggestions for part 3 are now being taken. I'd love to hear about what you would like to see in the next segment. Enjoy.**

 **Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **17**

 **3-9: "Return to New York"**

"What happened?" Leo demands as everyone rushes to the same point in the yard where the white van that Ryu and company had arrived in their first day used to sit, just in time to see it vanishing down the road in a cloud of dust.

"She saw this report on the news about-."

"She's going after Roy," Venus cuts him off, stuffing her hands in her pockets and staring off after the disappearing white van.

Venn glares at her, "You're standing in an ant pile."

"Yikes!" she jumps from her spot and rushes away from the danger, finding nothing there. "Hater."

"So let's go after her," Raph starts to open the driver door but Casey stops him with a sharp tug on his shoulder.

"Are you crazy?! You'll freak out every driver you pass!"

"Exactly, everyone in the back," Venus shoves past them all and climbs up into the driver's seat, slamming the door behind her on Casey's stunned expression.

"Who says I can't drive?! Casey Jones is a better driver than any of you," the hockey player complains.

Venus slips out a pair of her designer shades and pushes them onto the bridge of her nose as she glares at him, "Child, I've been driving all models of cars since I was nine years old. _I_ said you can't drive. In the back, now."

Reluctantly, he follows the others into the back of the 'Party Wagon', leaving the front seat open for Venn and April. Venus pops the van into reverse and, adjusting the driver's side mirror for a brief moment, high tails it backwards down the driveway perfectly without a single glance back over her shoulder. She spins the vehicle the second it meets the asphalt and shifts gears, gunning it down the road after Ryu.

"I cannot believe she took my van," Venus grumbles.

"We hotwired and _stole_ that van from the back alley behind a pizza joint," Venn glares at her.

"Yeah and I stuck my leftover gum under the steering wheel," she shoots back, "It's _my_ van."

"That's…that's just nasty."

"Says the guy who eats cheese on doughnuts."

* * *

They turn onto the dirt driveway leading to the building and their breathing all stops at once the second they see the cop car in the way. A single police office is pacing outside, propping up the traditional 'yellow tape' to ward off any curious wanderers. No white van can be seen anywhere around other than the cop car, making Venus and Venn share a worried glance at each other.

"Might want to get in the back and see if you can figure out where her overdramatic behind is," she rolls her eyes as she pulls up behind the cop car. Venn quickly and somehow gracefully hops over the seat and into the back with the others. He unzips his bag and pulls out a small tablet, flipping it on and booting up an app.

Donnie tries to glance over at it curiously, but something else catches his eye. There's something small that starts flashing from inside Venn's bag and Donnie taps the guy's arm, pointing at it, "Should your bag be doing that?"

Venn looks down and rushes to pull the flashing object out. It's an ear piece, which he wraps over his right ear and flips out the second attachment so that a small square screen sits in front of his eye. In a second, the flashing stops and is replaced by a single beep, "Ryu?"

There's a muffled voice from the other end.

"Well, excuse us for not being able to read your mind," he growls back.

Another hushed response.

"You want me to what?" Venn presses the ear piece further into his ear, pausing. His eyes lift over the back of the seat to glance at the officer approaching Venus's window, "Riiight…yeah…cause that will…totally work…"

The response is louder, a shout, and Venn flinches.

"Alright, chill," he leans forward so that Venus can hear his lowered voice, "Keep him focused on you."

Venus fumbles, "What? How?!"

He shrugs, "She wants you to flirt with him."

Venus scoffs, rolling down the window, "Riiight…cause that'll totally work."

"My thoughts exactly."

"Hi, officer," Venus forces a smile as the uniformed man steps up to the driver's side window. Behind her head, all the turtles duck lower into the shadows. "How are you?"

"Fine, ma'am, but I'm going to have to ask you to vacate the premises," he answers in a business tone.

Venus widens her grin, "Oh, I understand, we're just pulling over cause a few of us need to use the bathroom and this is the only…business…we've seen…for a…um…can I ask what happened here?"

Venn looks up over the back of the seat when Venus's voice starts to grow tight and spots movement over at the far corner of the building. Raph follows his gaze and stares at the same corner. There's nothing save for the light from the sun that comes from through the clouds filling the sky with a gray overcast.

"That's classified at this time, ma'am. The investigation is still undergoing and all information about the case won't be released until further notice."

Venus drops her smile, glancing off to the side as she tries to come up with something else to say. He starts to turn back to his car, "Wait, uh…so I guess the bathroom is out of the question?"

Venn shakes his head in disbelief as another response comes through the earpiece. "She's working on it!" he hisses to the voice on the other end.

Another response comes and he looks up over the seat again. Venus is chatting away about the long 'trip' they've been on and how 'someone' didn't go to the bathroom before they left the house and the cop looks ready to gorge her eyes out of her skull. Raph spots her then, Ryu peeks over at them from around the corner of the building, making a move to come out into view.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think you're doing a marvelous job out here," Venus carries on.

The police officer looks about ready to burst from boredom, "Thank you, ma'am, but I never said anything about my job out here."

Again, Venus ransacks her brain for something she can use, "Well, I just…know how hard a police officer's job is nowadays and I want to say thank you. I fully support you guys, one hundred percent."

The cop smiles a bit, "Thank you, miss."

She nods and carries on rambling, "Yeah, with having to deal with people calling with these crazy stories and their non-stop complaining…"

All the guys in the back watch in silence, holding their breath, as Ryu slides around the building, keeping her back against the wall and watching the policeman's back closely for any signs that he's going to turn around. It doesn't help much that there's nothing in front of the building for her to duck behind for cover. So inch by inch she crawls, the wooden building tugging at the hoody over her shoulders as she goes.

When she finally reaches the door, the handle doesn't move for her. Her face falls. Ryu plants her back against it, bringing her hands around behind her to work as she keeps her vision on the cop's back. Venus keeps him talking as much as she can, asking him about his average day on the clock and if he had ever had a K-9 dog to work with. The list of questions goes on and on for a good three minutes before the door finally budges and Ryu slips inside.

Venn sighs in relief and sits back down indian-style to start fiddling around on the laptop, a map is on the screen of the surrounding area and a small green dot blinking as it moves around across it. "See anything?" he asks into the headset.

At first the response doesn't come, but then the screen over Venn's eye flickers to life and he jerks his head up.

"What the-?"

* * *

Ryu's breath is lodged in her throat, her heart hammering so loud in her ears that she can hardly hear Venn's horrified whisper. The second she had closed the door she saw them.

Huge claw marks across the door and extending further onto the wall next to it. After Venn's inquire as to what she had seen, she flipped on the screen of her own headset and switched it on to send him an image. She backs away from the door to get a better look and finds even more evidence of claw marks dug into the wall here and there. This didn't look like someone had come in here and tried to rob Roy. This looked like a monster had come in with the sol-purpose to attack him…even kill him.

She spins slowly to take in the destruction of the room. The chairs in the waiting room are tossed around in a chaotic mess, pieces of the roof collapsed in random spots from above, the front counter where Roy normally sat to welcome people was covered in debris and the single chain with its 'employees only' sign has fallen to the floor at the gap in the counter. Ryu steps over it as she continues to the back.

To the left behind the counter is a small doorway leading to the room he had converted into a bedroom, the door hanging loosely from the bottom hinge, while to the right is a small bathroom with the door knocked all the way through. This door is nearly sliced through with claw marks.

 _Why would they need to get in here so badly?_ , she thinks.

" **Whatever that thing was, it was huge,** " Venn's voice replies in her ear.

Ryu can only find the energy to nod as she wanders around to assess the rest of the damage. As she steps carefully into the bathroom, her eyes lift to the mirror front vanity hanging on the wall above the greasy sink; what she isn't prepared to see are the smeared blood stains across the glass and a few tiny drops on the floor.

She jerks away, her back slamming against the wall as her breathing accelerates to an alarming rate.

" **Ryu? What's up? What is that?** " Venn's voice comes through the headset.

She barely hears him past the ringing in her ears, the pounding from her heart, the gasping of her breath. She can feel her power stirring in her blood and burning under her skin like boiling lava trying to break free.

 _Not here, Ryu, not here! Calm down, calm down, calm down!_ , Ryu squeezes her eyes shut and squats low to the floor, grabbing her head against the pounding tearing through her.

" **Ryu, calm down! You vitals just spiked! Ryu? Ryu?!** " Venn calls to her.

She jumps to her feet, pressing her body hard against the wall, and tries to get her breathing under control again, but nothing is helping. Opening her eyes again when Venn's voice tries to get through to her again, she stares back at her reflection in the blood stained mirror. The reflection's eyes are wide too, the expression strained in terror, but there's something else. There, growing in brightness, are two pin-point lights of pink-purple in the center of the pupils.

 _Oh, God, no! Please!_ , she breathes harder, panicking. _Calm down! I've got to calm down!_

" **Ryu! Calm yourself, now! There's a cop out here. An innocent! You've got to-!** "

Venn's voice is cut off, replaced by a new one, " **Ryu, listen to me. I know you can hear me. You've got to distract yourself. Think of something else to put your mind in a different direction. Look at what's around you—think!** "

Ryu grabs hold of Raph's voice and tears her eyes away from the mirror, fearing the thought of having to watch herself change. Her vision is already beginning to tunnel, the black edges flinching in time with her thrashing heartbeat. She finds something else to focus on, but there's nothing beyond the destruction of the bathroom, only making the panic worse.

" **Focus, Ryu, it's okay. Talk to me, tell me what you see** ," Raph chants smoothly to her.

Ryu can just make out his words over the thundering of her heart, "T-there's…so much…t-there's chaos everywhere and…I can't!"

" **Ryu, easy. Keep talking to me.** "

"There's debris everywhere…blood on the floor…all over the mirror…it's not even broken…" Ryu trails off, staring at the mirror. Blood on the mirror, it's not broken, there's drops on the floor with no smears…why would blood be smeared on the mirror like this? It doesn't even look like someone's bloody hand slid over it; more like a little kids was experimenting with red finger paint and went nuts on the shiny surface. There's no rhyme or reason to the circular smears. She leans up off the wall, staggering a big on her shaking legs and broken door on the floor, and takes a better look at the mirror.

The glowing in her eyes dim, the tunnel vision recedes, and the image sharpens.

Words are finely scratched into the smears, thin as paper: **Don't judge a book by its cover.**

Her eyes narrow in confusion, but then the realization hits her. Roy had said these words to her before, back home on the mountains. She had snuck into the library and wanted a bed time story when she was ten. It's where she first met him before he left a few weeks later.

He had found her in the library thumbing absentmindedly through the books and asked her if she'd found one of interest.

" _No, they all look boring,_ " she had replied in a flat tone, still deep in a dark place at that young age.

" _Well, this one might be to your liking,_ " he pulled out a book from the upper shelf that she couldn't reach and showed her the front cover of The "Little Mermaid".

She makes a look of disgust, " _I don't believe in fish people. It's boring._ "

" _Don't judge a book by its cover, darling,_ " he smiled as he opened the book to reveal the beautiful pictures inside, " _You may miss out on the good things within._ "

Ryu remembered how her eyes had opened wide in wonder as she took the book. The pictures and story had been enthralling despite the sad ending, but she had learned her lesson then and she remembers it now. Reaching up, she gently grabs the handle to the cabinet and it creaks open slowly.

There's bottles and toothbrushes and floss and all sorts of bathroom needs, but on the bottom shelf there's a white envelope with her name written on it with a few bloody finger prints along the side. She swallows before reaching forward with shaking fingers to pick it up and opening it up. Turning it upside down, something _clings_ out into her awaiting hand and a sheet of thin, folded paper flutters down along with it.

The heavy object, shiny and brand new, is a set of keys. She flips open the paper.

 **Ryu, you're nuts, but I think your design worked. I haven't had time to test it yet because I figured that you would want the pleasure of doing that reckless deed yourself. Stay safe, stay true, stay free.**

The edges of her eyes start to sting as unshed tears begin to build as she smiles. Squeezing her fist closed around the keys, she slips out of the bathroom and towards the back door that leads to the junkyard in the back yard. The back door swings open and Ryu closes it silently the second she overhears Venus's panicking voice echoing from the front yard. She's babbling now, running out of things to talk about, and Ryu can tell from the tone in the officer's voice that he's lost interest in the conversation.

 _Guess I need to hurry_ , Ryu thinks, shifting her gaze over the piles of old car parts and scrap metal lying around. It's not as large as the yard she has back in the city, but it's enough to impress her. Off near the bottom of the steps to her right sits something covered in a blue tarp; her smile widens. She takes the steps two at a time to the tarp and rips it off, revealing a motorcycle underneath. He'd changed it up a bit, buffing out the dents and chips, polishing the surface of the new paint job of dark green, and adding a different back wheel.

The back wheel is hollow, no rim, held on by metal cuff that curve over the back of the wheel and attach to the inner wall of the tire, but still allowing it to spin free when in motion. She swings her leg over to sit on the seat, sliding the key into the ignition and turning it. The motorcycle roars to life and the display speedometer floats as she revs the engine. Ryu looks back over her shoulder in disbelief, seeing the inside ring of the back wheel glowing with a pulse each time she revs the engine.

 _Holy cheese_ , she thinks, _It worked!_

A wide smile of excitement breaks out on her face as she continues to rev the engine, feeling the beast roar under her. _Time to have some fun_ , the grin widens on her lips.

She switches the motorcycle into gear and rides a short ways around a nearby pile slowly, dragging her toes as she goes, before turning the back wheel around so that she's facing the fence overlooking the side yard. With a sharp stamp of her heel in the dirt, the ground shoots up at the base of the fence at an angle and a ramp is formed.

Ryu hits the gas and the motorcycle races forward like a lioness darting for her kill. The wheels hit the ramp and send her soaring into the sky.

* * *

"Ma'am, again, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," the officer rubs his eyes in exhaustion.

"Hold on, please, I've just got one more to tell," Venus's smile has turned to one that rather reads 'shut-me-off-again-and-I'm-going-to-kill-you'.

"Ma'am, that was your last one. You have two minutes to leave the area or I'm going to have to call for back up to remove you."

"But-!"

 _Rrrrmmmm!_

They all turn towards the sudden sound and the cop reaches for his gun at his hip, "What was that?"

There's a loud roar of a nearby engine as it tears into the area, a blur of dark forest green and black swinging around the backside of the police car and skids to a stop on the other side. The motorcycle leans as Ryu's foot sets down on the side to hold it up. The cop aims his gun at her and shouts at her to stop.

She revs the engine in response and then takes off again, spinning dirt and rocks at them all as she does.

"Shoot!" the cop slips the gun back into its clip as he runs to get in his car and take off after the girl.

Venus pops the van into gear and growls under her breath about how annoying Ryu is before propping her elbow out the window and looking back behind her to steer out of the driveway. The van tires scratch across the loose gravel of the dirt path and then squeal on the asphalt as she takes off after the police sirens.

"Did she say where she left my van?" Venus snaps.

Venn points over the back of the seat down towards a side road coming up on their left, "She parked it there."

"Didn't we pass this already?"

"Yeah, you didn't see it?"

"No."

"Shows why you shouldn't drive," Casey shoots with a cocky laugh.

Venus grabs his wrist and jerks him forward until his neck hits the back of the seat and he breaks out into coughing, "April, get ready to take the wheel. Venn, give Donnie a head com so we can all stay in touch while on the road. I got a feeling this is about to get real."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all reviews, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	19. Chapter 18: 3-9(Part 2) Raph

**This is the finale-the ending to Part 2. I don't know when Part 3 will be finished and opened, but I am working on it as you read. All suggestions on anything you would like to see in the next part are welcomed. Enjoy!**

 **Please review! All advice, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**

 ****DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT OWN TMNT****

* * *

 **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Strike of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **18**

 **3-9.2: "Raph"**

They had all shifted around in the vehicles. Venn now drives their white van with Venus is the passenger seat communicating with Ryu who had somehow outrun the cop and lost him on the way back to the city. Donnie has his laptop open with his brothers around him in the back of the party wagon while Casey drives and April rides in the passenger seat.

Donnie speaks through the com on his ear with Ryu who rides down the deserted highway on her bike between the two vans on the center line of the road.

"Can you see anything ahead?" Donnie asks into the com.

Raph leans in close to hear the conversation on the com, earning him a nudge from his younger brain of a brother, but he doesn't move away. The conversation is a bit muffled but he's able to make it out, secretly glad to hear Ryu's voice sounding much calmer than it had before—slowing returning to normal.

" **I'm picking up something at the end of this highway. My scanner isn't as strong as the one in Metalhead, so can you get him to do one?** "

Donnie turns to Metalhead, the small robot leaning against the side of the back of the van, "Can he do that?"

" **Yeah, just tell him to do a scan of the city and make a visual map that'll show where the groups of Kraang are. The scanner in him may be basic but it still has that capability.** "

Donnie relays the order to Metalhead and the small robot begins to whirl and beep in response. A second later a new map scan appears of Donnie's laptop screen, "Oh no."

" **What is it?** "

"There's a blockade at the end of the highway!"

" **What?!** " Venus's voice finally comes to life.

Donnie pulls the com away from his ear to escape the abrupt outburst, "Anyone have any…helpful words?"

" **I can hear you, stick-boy.** "

" **Shut it, Venus. Donnie, send me that scan so I can take a look at it.** "

Donnie clicks a few buttons on his computer and a load bar blinks, "Okay, it's sending now."

" **Alright, I got it.** "

There's a pause.

" **I've got an idea, but I don't think y'all are going to like it.** "

" **We're jumping it aren't we?** "

" **Yep,** " Ryu replies to Venus.

"Wait, what?!" Donnie squeaks. "We can't jump that!"

Casey chuckles from the front seat and tightens his hands on the steering wheel, "Alright, Casey Jones likes this plan."

"Are you crazy?!" April growls at the kid before turning in her seat towards the turtles. "Donnie, tell her she's got to have another plan. This is insane."

" **I heard that and, no, there is no other way. Not if we want to get into the city tonight. Just follow behind me and try to keep up,** " Ryu responds.

Outside the side door, Raph can suddenly hear Ryu's engine rev up and she takes off ahead of them. Casey and Venn move the vehicles in a line behind her and Raph grips the back of April's seat.

"Hang on, guys!" Leo braces everyone. Not far ahead, Raph can just make out a checkpoint, guards standing at the entrance, but none of them look like Kraang. They're just regular police officers.

His eyes narrow in confusion. Ryu throws her hand out and then jerks it back towards her; a platform of asphalt tears up out of the road in front of the guards and forms a make-shift ramp. Raph's eyes open wide in realization—they're really about to jump the barricade!

" **Get your speeds up or you won't make it** ," Ryu tells Donnie and Venus over the coms before her motorcycle tears off at an alarming speed towards the barricade.

Venn and Casey follow suit, pressing the gas pedals to the floor board as they take off after her.

The guards at the gate group up at the barricade and lift their guns, preparing to shoot.

"Oh my-!" April cries.

A shot rings out and something tears past the turtle's vehicle in a flash of light and then past Ryu before hitting the ground at the guards' feet and exploding. A wall of blue electricity flares out before them.

" **Nice shot,** " Ryu laughs. She hits the gas again and gains even more speed.

She hits the ramp first, then Casey, then Venn, and they all fly over the barricade and land in the street beyond.

"Radical!" Mikey whoops in midair. "This is better than rocket skateboarding, dudes!"

"So now what?" Donnie asks into the com.

* * *

Ryu skids to a stop, lifting her left leg to press her foot against the fence and keep the motorcycle with colliding against it, and then hoping off to lean the machine against said fence. The other two vans pull up quietly into the dark, deserted ally way side by side as she's pulling off her helmet, gazing at the screen flipping through random information along the sides of the fiberglass face shield.

Venn closes his door, "Think you got close enough there, Ryu?"

She throws him a look and then follows his direction to her bike.

"Says mister 'I got to back into every pole in the-.' "

"Do _not_ finish that sentence," Venn snaps at Venus as he passes her, pointing a finger directly at her nose. She throws him a toothy grin. "Let's get inside before we're spotted."

"No need," Donnie grins as he pulls out a small remote, "There's secret entrance to the tunnel right on the other side of this fence."

They all leap over, using sheer force or the boxes and trash cans at the base of the fence, and land on the other side. Donnie presses a button and the ground opens up to them.

"Let's do this," Leo motions for everyone to head in, "Full on stealth, people."

The darkness swallows them and the sewers are a welcoming sight…for some.

"Well, I was hoping never to have to face this nastiness again," Venus gags.

"Get over it and keep it down," Venn shushes her as they sneak around corner to corner. The subway tunnels are deserted too, offline. They almost make it to the old lair when the sound of Kraang forces them all to stop and duck down below a stair well. Something else sparks Raph's attention too and he throws a hand gesture down their line to Leo who nods in return.

"What'd they say?" Venus hisses in Ryu's ear.

The white-haired girl slaps a hand over her mouth and jabs a finger above them. They all jump up to the rafters above just as a stray Kraang comes to investigate the noise. Ryu glares at Venus.

"April, do you think you could use your powers to locate master Splinter?" Donnie asks when all is clear.

"I can try but…well, you said his mind is no longer one with his body, right? Which means he could be crazy or unconscious or…or who knows what," the red head drops her eyes in defeat along with all the turtles.

"Yeah…but we still need to find him," Donnie urges.

"Wait, what about the lair?" Mikey adds.

* * *

The lair is trashed. There's literally no other way to put it. Raph's eyes shift over the rubble in despair, wanting nothing more than to see something familiar that had survived. Mainly his sensei.

Ryu's hand touches in the inside of his wrist as she stops beside him and lowers her eyes to the floor, "I'm sorry I wasn't here."

He grabs her hand snuggly, giving it a gently squeeze, "Don't dwell on that. It happened, it's okay. You're here now."

"Everyone stays here," Leo nods to Raph and Donnie and they both move towards the lair, leaving everyone else behind to hide in the shadows. Ryu watches them both go, sending a small prayer for their safety with them.

The brothers move to the dojo first, finding the same demolition there as well. A second later they're forced to duck down as some kind of Kraang drone hovers by. Donnie uses a ninja star to peek around the corner and try to get a good look at the machine. It's made of the same metal and pink-purple glow as the usual Kraang tech, but this appear different somehow.

The drone spins suddenly and pops open, revealing the half a dozen laser guns that it has hidden under the smooth surface, and begins firing in their direction. Donnie and Raph cover their heads against the wave of ammunition and debris that comes loose from the edge of the walls beside them. When it finally ceases, a rat runs by, and the drone moves on.

Both brothers jump when Leo appears out of nowhere and drags them away.

They regroup with the others outside and bring them the bad news, breathing heavy.

"No sign of Splinter," Leo sighs.

"The Kraang have some kind of…freaky security system to make sure we don't come back," Raph adds.

"Guess that means Ryu's no help there," Venus nudges the shorter girl, rewarding her with the white-haired girl back handing her against the head.

"Why not just go take it down and move back in? I miss our home, I miss my comic books, my VHS tapes, my action kick unicorn man, my collection of human underwear-."

"It's not that simple, Mikey," Donnie stops him, "We can't just move ba-."

"Ah! Guys, I…I think…I think I sense Splinter close by," April announces as she grabs her head. "It's faint and he seems…different. Come on! Hurry!"

They all follow after the red-head as she takes off back the way the turtles had come from, disappearing in the darkness. Raph's not sure what the girl had seen, but he's just glad to know that his father is nearby. He can sense Ryu close behind him to his flank and he looks back over his shoulder. She glances back at him and nods.

After a few corners she stops in a corridor of six different tunnels leading in opposite directions and April closes her eyes to concentrate, "He's…moving around in…such a panic. I can't get a pin point on him."

"Ryu," Venn calls.

They all glance back as the older teen steps up to the wall and sets her hand against it, closing her eyes. Things go unearthly quiet. Raph's seen her do this so many times and yet it never ceases to amaze him. Startling them all, they jump when Ryu pulls back and slams her fist into the wall, going silent again.

Without opening her eyes, she points to the tunnel behind her, "That way." And off she goes.

They follow after her and as the tunnel opens up to a bigger corridor, they all come face to face with the one who had trained the turtles; their father in all aspects of the word. But something is wrong.

Ryu skids to a stop as the turtles rush forward.

"Sensei!" Mikey exclaims. There's no answer from the master ninja. He just coils back on all fours and hisses at them with the wild eyes of a crazed animal. His kimono is gone, leaving behind only shorts and the bindings around his arms. Around him, the so-called M.O.U.S.E.R.S. lie torn and sparking on the floor from the assault the rat had given them.

Splinter lunges at them, claws bared, and they all scatter to avoid being hit. He lands on Casey, the one with the biggest fear of rats, and starts biting at the teen's face. Casey screams out in panic.

"Get him off of me! Get him off of me!"

The turtles go and together pull their father away by the arms.

"It's okay, sensei," Donnie tries to call to his master, "It's us! Your sons!"

They struggle to hold him still, Venus and Venn going to help Casey up to his feet while April stands before Splinter. Ryu backs herself away from the scene to remain close by Venn's side if he needs any help, throwing wary glances at her other family's struggle.

"Try to remember," Donnie pleads, but their master just continues to pull and bite at them wildly.

"He's too strong," Mikey grunts.

"Sensei, it's us!" Leo cries. "Calm down!"

Splinter finally loses his strength and goes limp in their arms, glancing around at them in defeat as if they are nothing but captors to him. Ryu bites her bottom lip, watching him. Those eyes, though the stare of a crazed animal, remind her so much of how she once looked at the world: lost and defenseless. It's not something anyone should have to feel.

 _Whiirllliii!_

Ryu spins and gasps, "Guys!"

They all look up as a nearby M.O.U.S.E.R stands up and screeches at the group. Almost instantly, a group of Footbots swing in from the darkness above them and circle them.

"Oh no!"

"The Foot!"

"Don't let them harm Splinter!" Leo orders. Ryu faces the three coming at her and slams her foot into the stone beneath her. A long slab rises up and she kicks it forward, sending it barreling into the bots and they fly backward.

Startled, Splinter breaks free from the turtles' hold and races off down a nearby tunnel.

"Splinter! Raph cries.

"Go after him. We got this handled!" Venn calls. Venus drops Casey to the floor and races off at an approaching bot, spinning gracefully through the air and smashing the heel of her boot into the machine's shoulder. It cracks under her beating and falls to the ground.

Around them, the bots vanish down the tunnel, leaving the battle before it even starts.

"I was just getting started!" Venus gripes.

"Come on!" Ryu orders.

They catch up to the turtles only to find them standing at a blocked tunnel and watching their master be taken away by Footbots yet again.

"Sensei!" Mikey shouts.

* * *

"Nice pad," Venus mumbles to herself.

"Nice doesn't even describe it," Ryu growls, "The guy who runs it is hideous…inside and out."

Venus throws her a look, watching the girl's angered expression, "Don't mean his house ain't nice."

Ryu's about to say something else, but she tunes back in to Leo's plan as his voice shoots an octave higher.

"It will work," Leo snaps.

"And I say it won't. We can't all just go in there together. It's too risky and too many on one mission. There needs to be someone on the outside for surveillance and back up in case the others are caught. If we all go in, there won't be anyone left to call on," Venn tries to explain.

"Look, this is my father we're talking about and this place is overrun with mutants and robots. It's going to take all of us. This is my team, I give the orders," Leo steps up to the taller guy angrily.

Ryu rolls her eyes and props her hands on her hips with a heavy sigh.

"Venus and Ryu are _my_ responsibility; they don't belong to you. That means they are not yours to order."

"How about you two idiots just stop yammering for a second and take a breather," they all turn to Venus who leans against a wood pole holding up the water tank on the building top, picking at her nails. She looks up at them with a look of disgust, "My two year old brothers are more mature than you."

Venn opens his mouth to tell her to zip her mouth, but he spots the familiar hoody slung over her elbow and sighs, "Where'd she go now?"

She grins at him sarcastically, "She got sick of listening to you two egotistical maniacs argue like a bunch of five year olds. Where do you think she went?"

Venn whips his head around, eyes searching the building across the street for any signs of familiar movement. Raph spots her first and points in her direction.

"There," he watches her slip from the shadows of a chimney, spin the neck of a Footbot until it falls to the ground without a sound, and then leap elegantly through the hole in the triangle window at the front of the roof. "Wow, she's not half bad," he admires with a crooked smile.

"Stop drooling and get moving," Venus steps off the side of the building and they all follow suit, leaving Casey and Venn behind to keep a look out.

Ryu ducks into a vent after ducking through the double doors of the empty main hall and crawls through them until she comes to a four-way intersection with a drop in the center. She gazes down the drop shaft in thought, taking a moment to decide whether or not she wants to take the leap.

 _Guess I really don't have a choice since I'm already in here…So why did I even stop?_ , Ryu swings her legs around and drops into the shaft, loving the free fall feeling rushing through her. It doesn't last long though as she lands on her feet not long later in a long, round channel a few seconds later. Looking down one end, she's got the channel disappearing off into the darkness while the other end opens up to a strange room beyond. _No argument there_ , she thinks, raising an eyebrow.

She sneaks over to the edge of the channel and peeks out into the large, round room. This room is huge, reminding Ryu of a giant cylinder with different levels all up the sides, with a giant containment unit filled with that glowing, green mutagen goo that once again seems to be at the center of everything…literally.

The hair stands up on the back of her neck. Her body reacts faster than her thoughts, her hand reaching out to pin the hand coming at her against the wall while the other goes for the neck.

Her heart, breath, brain…they all catch up a millisecond later.

Ryu releases a heavy sigh, "Raph! Would you stop doing that?!"

He clamps a hand down over her mouth as her hiss echoes out through the tunnel a bit too loudly for any of their liking. Leo, Donnie, and Mikey, followed closely by April, step into view behind him.

"Ryu, we have to stay together. No more running off on your own until a plan has been made. We don't need two Raph's on the team," Leo orders in a low voice as he slips up to the edge of the tunnel's opening and peeks out over into the large room beyond. They all join him a second later, Ryu swallowing her opinion at being barked at.

"There's master Splinter!" Leo points out a room lower down and across on the other side of the chamber and they all follow his direction. Sure enough, a large form down on all fours is pacing back and forth in front of a glass wall as the only means of seeing into the enclosed cell.

"Alright, here's the plan. Are you listening this time, Ryu?" Leo throws her a glare across Raph.

She narrows her eyes in response, "Get to talkin' or I leave you all behind again."

"April, you and I will go help master Splinter. Everyone else will stand guard while she tries to get his memory back."

"Wow, that took all of two seconds to come up with that obvious plan of action."

Leo stands tall and pushes Raph back so that he can glare at her directly, "You know what, Ryu. I don't know what your deal is but ever since we've returned to the city, you've been really acting strange. It's like you're rushing to leap at everything before looking to see how steep the cliff is."

Ryu rolls her eyes, "As little sense as that made, I'm here to rescue Splinter same as you. Does it really matter that I don't wait for you to keep up?"

"It does when you're not working with us as a team!"

"You're not my lead-!"

"Okay, calm down!" Raph pushes in between them both and halts their argument before it can get too loud and too out of hand, "We can have this argument later, but right now we're the only people who can get master Splinter out of here. Like you told me before, Leo, we all have the same enemy so we have to work together. Truce?"

Donnie and Mikey watch from the sidelines, sharing a worried look, while Raph stands as referee for the fight. Ryu and Leo continue to glare at each other, completely oblivious to Venus who has stepped up to the edge and blinked in amusement.

"Hey, Beeves and Butthead, would you two take a moment from beating your chests like apes and tell me if there's supposed to be a…giant, monster fly-man zooming around…"

"That's Stockman," Leo explains. "He's their…scientist in a way."

"And he's staring at us why?"

They all flinch in surprise as they catch the fly staring at them, raising a mutated hand to point at them and scream, "Innnnn-trrrru-ders! Get zztheeem!"

From behind them, there's a terrible screech and they spin to face it. A miniature version of Shredder bounces around like an evil energizer bunny from hades. Ryu cocks her head to the side in straight up 'what-the-heck'.

"Not you again!" Mikey whines before jumping out of the tunnel and into the massive hall. "Come on! Let's get sensei and go."

They all jump out after him as Leo starts barking his orders once more, "April, you and I get to Splinter, the rest of you on point. Move!"

Ryu lands on the first floor, rushes over to the side, flips over the railing and drops down to the next where Splinter is. Leo and April land next and rush to the glass. "We've got to get this open!" April exclaims.

"Move," Ryu grabs hold of the metal railing with her powers and rips it up as easily as she would a blade of grass before hurling it at the glass. It darts through it, sending ripples of cracks in all directions. Leo finishes the job by jumping and kicking it the rest of the way through. The glass shatters and April rushes in, holding her hands up when Splinter recoils away and tries to slink off into a corner.

"Ryu, watch out!" Leo shouts, rushing towards her. She blinks in surprise, pulling her eyes away from April's work. Something slams into her side, knocking the wind right out of her and Ryu goes soaring through the air. She can feel her back hit the glass of the neighboring cell and it bows…creaks…bends…

 _Crash!_

Ryu hits the floor and rolls across in chaotically until she crashes into the back wall, "O-ow…what…just h-happened…?" She sits up and rubs the back of her neck as it pops when she tries to stretch it out. Her ears are ringing so loudly she's unsure if it's coming from her own head or somewhere nearby, but just faintly through it all there's a voice. It sounds so far away and yet the person screams at the top of their lungs; it's the weirdest things she ever heard in her life. Almost as if she's sinking deeper and deeper underwater and the person is shouting at her from above the surface.

Ryu blinks open her eyes slowly, trying to disperse the blurriness fogging up her vision. Something zips across the room to stand in front of her and then in rapid procession, gunfire echoes through the room faster than she can count. Each shot fired, makes her heart shudder terribly, wanting nothing more than to be able to see who was on the receiving end of the ammo.

For a split second between each bullet echo, another sound followed; it's faint, barely noticeable, but familiar none the less.

 _Is that…ice?_ , she thinks.

The shouting pauses until the gun shots cease, but resume while accompanied by a hallow banging. Closer to her, feet shift across the hard floor, brushing across it almost as if…

 _Almost as if the bottom of the feet were covered in pads…_

Ryu blinks faster, pushing against the wall behind her as she struggles to stand on her stunned legs, heart hammering faster in alarm. With the wall being the only thing holding her up, her eyes finally begin to clear and the image moving towards her comes into focus. Time stops around her, the earth pauses. As if it's waiting to see what move she will make.

Her body starts recovering from the roll-about and her legs kick start. She dives to her left as an ice bullet explodes where she had been. Again she rolls as another bullet hits and bursts into heat at her side.

"You should have never returned here, cub!" Tigerclaw growls, raising his guns to fire again.

Ryu pulls the floor up with her power and it responds, shooting up like a column to protect her from the projectile, but the bullet cracks it easily and the eruption knocks her back. The fall rattles her rib cage as she lands on her back and quickly tries to recover.

"You're hold over the earth seems to have weakened," he chuckles.

"Just because I'm not here to fight you."

Tigerclaw pauses, glaring deeper at her in confusion, "To free the rat. We know of your plan already, cub."

Ryu places her back against the pillar she's called up to catch her breath and starts fiddling through her pockets, searching for any of the smoke bombs she pilfered off of Donnie a few days ago. She had gone a little giddy while goofing around the yard, throwing them at Mikey, so she's not sure if she has any-.

She grins, _Two left!_

Pulling them up out of her pocket to see them, she tucks them close to her chest in preparation.

"Yeah," Ryu answers, "We came for our sensei. What's it to you? He's not yours to hold prisoner here. That's kidnapping and illegal."

"True as that may be," Tigerclaw shifts his weight, waiting for an opening to attack again, "You would not miss a final chance to get your revenge. I know you, cub. Losing your whole family to an innocent fire is not something you would so easily get over. That is why you are truly here."

Her blood boils under her skin, her power flashing behind her eyes. Her fists tighten, nails digging into her palms. "I-Innocent…?" she mutters.

Tigerclaw hears her despite her muted response and he laughs, "I see I was correct. You have not made peace with it."

"Never."

"Which is why you will never beat me, cub. Even if you were to move on, you still would never match me," Tigerclaw lifts his gun and aims at the slight sign of the edge of her arm poking out from behind the pillar. "You will never win."

The gun fires, but Ryu is already gone. She races off from the other side of the pillar that he shoots at and raises her fist in midair, "Yes I will! You'll pay for what you did! Murderer!"

Her fist hits the floor and two shafts of metal fire up from the ground at lightning speed from under the floor, slamming into his wrists and knocking his guns out of his hands before he can defend himself. Ryu flashes forward and takes him head on, using all her training in hand-to-hand combat that she learned from Splinter to take him down.

"You set those flames and destroyed three innocent people that night! You murdered innocent souls, you demon!" she shouts at him with each punch, her power fueling both her anger and her attacks, setting her skin ablaze with boiling heat and burning the edges of her eyes. "I HATE YOU!"

Tigerclaw dodges easily, stumbling back from a few attacks and throwing a few of his own, but after a dozen rounds, he finally makes it through her defenses and grabs her around the throat. He lifts her and slams her back against the wall high enough to make her kicks useless.

Ryu grabs at his wrist, trying to dislodge his grasp, but he raises a paw and extracts his claws threateningly. She pauses in her struggle.

"T-take a chance…flea-bag…" she growls through the lack of air and crushing pressure on her neck. With a flick of her wrist, two sharp, jagged spears shoot out of the floor on either side of him and the tips halt a few inches from his own neck. "Let's see…w-who dies first."

"You wish for death so freely," Tigerclaw states, glaring up at her, "How little respect you have for your own life."

"Even if I d-die trying…I will…avenge…m-my family," Ryu growls, glaring back steadily.

"Then avenge them!" he raises his voice, "But take you anger out on your real enemy."

"I AM!" she screams.

"I DID NOT KILL YOUR FAMILY, CUB!"

* * *

 **THE END.**

 **Go away.**

 **Now.**

 **See you in PART THREE.**

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Here's a layout of the text affects again:**

 _Italics_ -any words in this affect are personal Thoughts or Sounds.

 **Bold** -any words in this affect are Computer Messages/Text Messages.

" **Bold** "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Computer Voices.

" _Italics_ "-any words in this affect inside quotation marks are Past words/Emphasizing.

" ** _Bold/Italics_** "-any words in this dual affect inside quotation marks are Past Computer Messages/Past Text Messages.

 ** _Bold/Italics_** -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Earth.

 _Italics/Underlined_ -any words in this dual affect are Voice of the Spirit Guides.

 **Bold Underlined** -any words in this dual affect are an Unknown Voice.

* * *

 **Again, all reviews, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.**

 **-Katt B.**


	20. Chapter 19: NOTICE!

**Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles**

 **Rise of the Dragon**

 **PART 2**

* * *

 **19**

 **Not A Chapter:**

I know, I'm sorry for these horrific jokes.

Just wanted to let all the readers know that I am working on TMNT Part 3 but it may take a bit longer to write up.

Ravyne is up to her neck in fanart for the story and for her own projects so she won't be able to edit as fast as before.

* * *

And I am working on a side fanfic for another fav of mine….

Shall I give up my secret?

Yes.

I adore Teen Wolf so I am working on a short story for that.

It is in the VERY beginning stages, mostly because I can't decide where I want to begin, but also it has not even broken out on paper yet.

* * *

As for right now, I am going back and rewriting the first few chapters that I had done for TMNT Part 3.

For the simple reason that we didn't have hardly any reviews or reads on this past segment.

We didn't receive any reviews as to why so that we could correct the issues, but we did receive two reviews from some loyal fans and appreciate the kind words.

Thank you.

So on that note, I will be changing up the story a bit in the way I have been writing it.

I'm going to go down a different path and bring in a bit more darker tones.

The next segment is going to bring about a much more, in-depth touch to Raphael and Ryu's relationship but also tear it apart as well.

A member of the turtle team is leaving while a new addition will be joining, adding strain and at the same time opening doors.

I hope this new path will bring in more readers and reviews that will both help better the story and bring in new ideas as to what you guys would like to see in Part 3 in the future.

I do hope that I can make it to Part 4 so that I can truly let my real ideas come to light because I have so much back story and darkness I want to reveal from Ryu's past life.

* * *

I hope to hear from you all soon, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas, a safe New Years, and….

As a little early Christmas present to you all…

Here are two sneak previews of what is to come in Part 3 which has finally been titled:

 _ **TMNT: Call of the Dragon**_

* * *

" _You've leaving?!"_

" _I have to. They've called me back; said it was an emergency."_

" _What kind of emergency?"_

" _They didn't say."_

" _That's not a good enough reason!"_

" _Does there need to be for them? I'm going home."_

 _They share a sideways glance before turning back in horror, jabbing a finger at each other._

" _You're leaving me here with…that?!" they shout together._

* * *

" _What is it?"_

" _He," comes the sharp correction._

" _What is_ _ **HE**_ _?!" shoots back the sarcastic remark._

" _I don't know! Why don't you ask him?"_

" _I don't speak gecko."_

" _I'm not a gecko."_

" _See? He's not a gecko."_

 _They spin back, dumbstruck._

" _Wait, whaaaat?!"_

* * *

Hope you enjoyed!

Merry Christmas!

Thanks again,

From both of us,

 **-Katt B.**

 _-Ravyne_


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